MINIMUM DOGMA
AND
RELIGIOUS TOLERATION
A Thesis
Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the
Louisiana State University and
Agricultural and Mechanical College
In partial fulfillment of the
Requirements for the degree of
Master of Arts
In
The Department of Political Science
By
Clinton Barron
B.A., Louisiana State University, 2001
August 2004
TABLE OF CONTENTS
ABSTRACT.......................................................................................................................iii
INTRODUCTION...............................................................................................................1
CHAPTER ONE: MINIMUM DOGMA: XENOPHANES AND PLATO........................4
I. Introduction – The Leap in Being....................................................................................4
II. Xenophanes’ Seemliness..............................................................................................11
III. Plato’s Theology.........................................................................................................15
IV. Conclusion..................................................................................................................21
CHAPTER TWO: MINIMUM DOGMA AND TOLERATION:
MORE AND SPINOZA......................................................................23
I. Introduction...................................................................................................................23
II. More’s Utopians...........................................................................................................23
III. Spinoza’s Minimum Dogma.......................................................................................36
IV. Conclusion..................................................................................................................41
CHAPTER THREE: MINIMUM DOGMA, TOLERATION, AND LOCKE..................43
I. Introduction...................................................................................................................43
II. Locke’s Civil Dogma...................................................................................................44
III. Locke’s Religious Dogma...........................................................................................51
IV. Conclusion..................................................................................................................59
CONCLUSION..................................................................................................................62
BIBLIOGRAPHY..............................................................................................................68
VITA..................................................................................................................................71
ii
ABSTRACT
This thesis examines issues that emerge from the investigation of the relationship
between John Locke’s arguments for religious toleration as found in his Letter
Concerning Toleration and his construction of a minimum dogma for Christianity in his
The Reasonableness of Christianity. The first chapter follows the development of
minimum dogma from its origin in the experience Eric Voegelin terms the leap in being,
through Xenophanes’ concept of “seemliness,” to the minimum dogmas of Plato. The
second chapter examines the use of minimum dogma in theories of religious toleration by
More and Spinoza. The final chapter examines the work of John Locke and questions the
adequacy of his formulation minimum dogma without a basis in the leap in being as a
support for religious toleration.
iii
INTRODUCTION
David Wootton in his introduction to Political Writings of John Locke
writes:
A few years ago it was a remarkable fact that there was hardly a country in
the world that did not claim to be a democracy or to be on the road to
democracy…. The exceptions (e.g. Kuwait, South Africa) were obvious
abnormalities. At the same time, though, the differences between the so-called
people’s democracies and their opponents, the bourgeois democracies, were so
great that nobody could imagine there was one common set of political principles
recognized throughout the world. It was merely that one word passed as common
currency in several different languages. Now the situation is totally different. As
communism in eastern [sic] Europe has collapsed, it has suddenly begun to look
as though liberal democracy, founded on the separation of powers, representative
government, freedom of speech and conscience, and the right to pursue wealth,
will become the norm throughout the world. Even in England calls for
constitutional reform are increasingly heard, and it is now possible to appeal
against the decrees of a semi-sovereign Parliament to a court of rights in
Strasburg. We are all, it would seem, liberals now. Almost all of us can now say
that Locke is our political phiosopher.1
Accepting that this is true, the research of the political theory of John Locke represents a
very timely study. It, in fact, would constitute the exegesis of the theoretical
underpinnings of the political world as it currently stands. The current study is an
attempt to advance this research.
Following Eric Voegelin’s approach of political science first explained in The
New Science of Politics and carried to fruition in Order and History, such research is
believed to properly begin with an inquiry into the representation of existential meaning
at the heart of John Locke’s political thought. The centrality of religious toleration to
Locke’s thought and the centrality of Locke’s minimum dogmas to this toleration indicate
1
Political Writings of John Locke, ed. with an introduction by David Wootton (New
York: Mentor, 1993), 8-9.
1
that an inquiry into these minimum dogmas represents a credible start to this research.
Following Voegelin’s dictum that “the order of history emerges from the history of
order,”2 this study will first examine the history of minimum dogmas before turning its
attention to the work of Locke.
Voegelin’s treatment of minimum dogma is closely related to his treatment of the
origination of theology. This study will therefore turn to Voegelin’s analysis of the
experience from which theology originated in search of a theoretical understanding of
minimum dogma useful to the research of that in Locke’s thought. Voegelin terms this
experience the “leap in being.” Voegelin finds that Xenophanes differentiates this
experience with his symbol “seemliness” in the direction that will eventually be
developed by Plato into theology.3 The first chapter of this follows Voegelin’s Order and
History treatment of the leap in being and Xenophanes to an analysis of Plato’s theology
and minimum dogmas.
These dogmas developed by Plato are substantially different from those of Locke.
This necessitates a second chapter dedicated to two minimum dogmas found to be
intermediate between those of Plato and those of Locke. These are the minimum dogmas
found in St. Thomas More’s Utopia and in the work of Benedict de Spinoza. These
minimum dogmas are found to be intermediate in the sense that they connect minimum
dogma with the toleration of religion, in contrast to Plato’s use of minimum dogma as a
means to critique the improper representations of divinity he found in his surrounding
society, while maintaining the end of representing the divine properly in society, in
2
Eric Voegelin, Order and History, vol. 1, Israel and Revelation (Baton Rouge: LSU,
1956), ix.
3
Ibid, 10-11.
2
contrast to Locke, who this study will argue lacks such an end. As Voegelin does not
address these dogmas in any substantial way in Order and History, an attempt is made to
develop Voegelin’s History of Political Ideas treatments into a form more consistent with
Voegelin’s later work while also addressing some disagreements with Voegelin’s
handling of these thinkers.
Locke’s minimum dogmas will finally receive direct treatment in the third and
final chapter. This chapter examines and critiques both the minimum civil dogma found
in A Letter Concerning Toleration and the minimum religious dogma found in The
Reasonableness of Christianity. This chapter and this study conclude with an
examination of the interaction of these two minimum dogmas.
3
CHAPTER ONE
MINIMUM DOGMA:
XENOPHANES AND PLATO
I.
Introduction - The Leap in Being
Eric Voegelin identifies the origin not only of minimum dogma, the subject of this
study, but also theology and even sectarian conflict with an experience he terms a “leap
in being.” The centrality of this experience for these key issues in the work of John
Locke necessitates that an adequate understanding of this experience be achieved before
the examination of Locke’s political theory. This chapter will therefore follow
Voegelin’s treatment of the “leap in being” and its accompanying theoretical problems as
they develop towards the range of problems found in the works of John Locke.
Voegelin gives his initial discussion of the “leap in being” in the introduction to
the first volume of his masterwork Order and History. To properly understand this “leap
in being” described by Voegelin, attention must first be given to what it is a “leap” from.
Voegelin begins his treatment of the situation prior to this experience:
Man’s partnership in being is the essence of his existence, and this essence
depends on the whole, of which existence is a part. Knowledge of the whole,
however, is precluded by the identity of the knower with the partner, and the
ignorance of the whole precludes essential knowledge of the part. This situation
of ignorance with regard to the decisive core of existence is more than
disconcerting: it is profoundly disturbing, for from the depth of this ultimate
ignorance wells up the anxiety of existence.
The ultimate, essential ignorance is not complete ignorance. Man can
achieve considerable knowledge about the order of being, and not the least part of
that knowledge is the distinction between the knowable and the unknowable.
Such achievement, however, comes late in the long-drawn-out process of
experience and symbolization that forms the subject matter of the present study.
The concern of man about the meaning of his existence in the field of being does
not remain pent up in the tortures of anxiety, but can vent itself in the creation of
4
symbols purporting to render intelligible the relations and tensions between the
distinguishable terms of the field.4
Voegelin finds that “even in the confusion of [the] early stages [of symbolization]
there is enough method to allow the distinction of typical features in the process of
symbolization.” Initial “typical features” include “the predominance of the experience of
participation” and “the preoccupation of the lasting and passing (i.e., the durability and
transiency) of the partners in the community of being.”5 It is the third typical feature
identified by Voegelin that proves most important for the subject of this study, however.
This feature “is the attempt at making the essentially unknowable order of being
intelligible as far as possible through the creation of symbols which interpret the
unknown by analogy with the really, or supposedly, known.” Such symbols, “responding
to the pressure of experience,” become increasingly adequate.6
Voegelin explains the further development of symbols:
Compact blocks of the knowable will be differentiated into their component parts
and the knowable itself will gradually come to be distinguished from the
essentially unknowable. Thus, the history of symbolization is a progression from
compact to differentiated experiences and symbols. Since this process is the
subject matter of the whole subsequent study we shall at present mention only two
basic forms of symbolization which characterize great periods of history. The one
is the symbolization of society and its order as an analogue of the cosmos and its
order; the other is the symbolization of social order by analogy with the order of a
human existence that is well attuned to being. Under the first form society will be
symbolized as a microcosmos; under the second form as a macroanthropos.7
Society ordered by the microcosmos symbol is chronologically prior to the second form
mentioned. Voegelin remarks on this precedence, “Why this should be hardly requires
elaborate explanations, for earth and heaven are so impressively the embracing order into
4
Voegelin, Order and History, 1: 2-3.
Ibid., 3.
6
Ibid., 5.
7
Ibid.; cf. Voegelin’s discussion of cosmological and anthropological representation in
Eric Voegelin, The New Science of Politics (Chicago: Chicago, 1952), chap. 3.
5
5
which human existence must fit itself, if it wants too survive, that the overwhelmingly
powerful and visible partner in the community of being suggests its order as the model of
all order, including that of man and society.”8 Voegelin finds that the civilizations of the
ancient Near East, in particular, “symbolized politically organized society as a cosmic
analogue, as a cosmion, by letting vegetative rhythms and celestial revolutions function
as models for the structural and procedural order of society.”9
When these cosmologically symbolized societies break down, in the succession of
the empires of the ancient Near East for example, Voegelin finds that the “disaster” of
such breakdown tends to “engulf the trust in cosmic order” and leads to a new
symbolization of “society as macroanthropos.” The breakdown of societies “in spite of
[their] ritual integration into cosmic order” leads to a shift in symbolization “toward what
is more lasting than the visibly existing world … toward the invisibly existing being
beyond all being in tangible existence.” Voegelin finds that since this being transcends
“all being in the world and of the world itself,” it “can be experienced only as a
movement in the soul of man.” This means “the soul … ordered by attunement to the
unseen god [transcendent being] becomes the model of order that will furnish symbols
for ordering society analogically in its image.”10
According to Voegelin, this shift in symbols from the cosmos made small, as in
the civilizations examined in Part I of Israel and Revelation,11 to that of man written
8
Ibid.
Ibid., 5-6; for Voegelin’s analysis of these civilizations see Part I, “The Cosmological
Order of the Ancient Near East,” in this volume; for Voegelin’s earlier work on cosmions
see Eric Voegelin, The New Science of Politics, chap. 1§2 and chap. 2§2.
10
Voegelin, Order and History, 1: 6.
11
Ibid., 13ff.
9
6
large, as found in Book II of Plato’s Republic,12 may be empirically observed in a number
of different societies and be manifested in a number of ways:
The shift toward macroanthropic symbolization becomes manifest in the
differentiation of philosophy and religion out of the preceding, more compact
forms of symbolization, and it can be empirically observed, indeed, as an
occurrence in the phase of history which Toynbee has classified as the Time of
Troubles. In Egypt the social breakdown between the Old and Middle Kingdom
witnessed the rise of the Osiris religiousness. In the feudal disintegration of
China appeared the philosophical schools, especially those of Lao-tse and
Confucius. The war period before the foundation of the Maurya Empire was
marked by the appearance of the Buddha and of Jainism. When the world of the
Hellenic polis disintegrated, the philosophers appeared, and the further troubles of
the Hellenistic world were marked by the rise of Christianity. It would be unwise,
however, to generalize this typical occurrence into a historical ‘law,’ for there are
complications in detail. The absence of such a shift in the breakdown of
Babylonian society (as far as the scantiness of sources allows the negative
judgment) suggests that the ‘law’ would have ‘exceptions,’ while Israel seems to
have arrived at the second form without any noticeable connection with a specific
institutional breakdown and subsequent period of trouble.13
Voegelin finds that at this point in the process of symbolization, awareness of the
analogical character of the symbols typically persists intact. Voegelin describes the
variety with which this awareness may impact the symbolization:
The order of being, while remaining in the area of essential ignorance, can be
symbolized analogically by using more than one experience of partial order in
existence. The rhythms of plant and animal life, the sequence of the seasons, the
revolutions of sun, moon, and constellations may serve as models for the
analogical symbolizations of social order. The order of society may serve as a
model for symbolizing celestial order. All these orders may serve as models for
symbolizing the order in the realm of divine forces. And the symbolizations of
divine order in their turn may be used for analogical interpretations of existential
orders within the world.14
“Concurrent and conflicting symbols” occur in this milieu but fail to “engender distrust in
the truth of the symbols.”15
12
Plato, The Republic, 368c-e.
Voegelin, Order and History, 1: 6.
14
Ibid., 6-7.
15
Ibid., 7.
13
7
The significance of this milieu of symbols prior to the “leap in being” for
theorization of toleration becomes apparent in the following passage:
If anything is characteristic of the early history of symbolization, it is the
pluralism in expressing truth, the generous recognition and tolerance extended to
rival symbolizations of the same truth. The self-interpretation of an early empire
as the one and only true representative of cosmic order on earth is not in the least
shaken by the existence of neighboring empires who indulge in the same type of
interpretation. The representation of a supreme divinity under a special form and
name in one Mesopotamian city-state is not shaken by a different representation
in the neighboring city-state. And the merger of various representations when an
empire unifies several formerly independent city-states, the change from one
representation to another when the dynasties change, the transfer of cosmogonic
myths from one god to another, and so forth, show that the variety of
symbolizations is accompanied by a vivid consciousness of the sameness of truth
at which man aims by means of his various symbols.16
Religious toleration is simply not an issue under such conditions. Therefore, toleration
cannot emerge as a theoretical issue until a break with these conditions is made. This
break occurs in what Voegelin will term a “leap in being.”
Voegelin finds that the break with the previous milieu of symbols begins “when
the awareness of the analogical character of the symbolization is attracted by the problem
of the greater or lesser adequacy of symbols to their purpose of making the order of being
transparent.” The very mass of symbols leads to an experience of their inadequacy for
“the symbols are many, while being is one.” Attempts ranging from “interpreting a
manifold of highest local divinities as aspects of the one highest empire god” to
“theogonic speculation” upon the origin of the other gods “through creation by the one
truly highest god” may be made to bring the a mass of symbols “into a rational,
hierarchical order.”17
16
17
Ibid.
Ibid., 8.
8
Though the “limit of tolerance for rival symbolizations” is reached in “political
summodeism and theogonic speculation,” Voegelin maintains that “no serious break need
yet occur.” Voegelin explains, “The theogonic speculation of a Hesiod was not the
beginning of a new religious movement in opposition to the polytheistic culture of Hellas,
and the Roman summodeism, through Constantine, could even draw Christianity into its
system of symbolization.” Voegelin finds that the break, when it does occur, “results not
from rational reflection on the inadequacy of pluralistic symbolization (though such
reflection may experientially be a first step toward more radical ventures), but from the
profounder insight that no symbolization through analogues of existential order in the
world can even faintly be adequate to the divine partner on whom the community of
being and its order depend.”18
Voegelin goes on to describe how toleration for the milieu of symbols is broken:
Only when the gulf in the hierarchy of being that separates divine from mundane
existence is sensed, only when the originating, ordering, and preserving source of
being is experienced in its absolute transcendence beyond being in tangible
existence, will all symbolization by analogy be understood in its essential
inadequacy and even impropriety. The seemliness of symbols –if we may borrow
the term from Xenophanes –then will become a pressing concern, and a hitherto
tolerable freedom of symbolization will become intolerable because it is an
unseemly indulgence betraying a confusion about the order of being and, more
deeply, a betrayal of being itself through lack of proper attunement. The horror of
a fall from being into nothingness motivates an intolerance which no longer is
willing to distinguish between stronger and weaker gods, but opposes the true god
to the false gods. This horror induced Plato to create the term theology, to
distinguish between true and false types of theology, and to make the true order of
society dependent on the rule of men whose proper attunement to divine being
manifests itself in their true theology.19
Voegelin dismisses charges that this acute awareness to the inadequacy or
impropriety of analogical symbolization is merely an emphasis “on something that was
18
19
Ibid., 8-9.
Ibid., 9.
9
known all the time and did not receive more attention precisely because nothing would be
changed by becoming more emphatic about it.”20 Voegelin finds that “existence is
partnership in the community of being; and the discovery of imperfect participation, of a
mismanagement of existence through lack of proper attunement to the order of being, of
the danger of a fall from being, is a horror indeed, compelling a radical reorientation of
existence.” Such a “horror” impels a turn both from symbols now deemed “unseemly”
and “from world and society as the sources of misleading analogy.”21 This turn involves
not only a turn from mundane existence but also as a turn “toward the true source of
order.” Voegelin finds that this shift in ordering forces “is not an increase on the same
scale but a qualitative leap.” This “leap in being,” when it occurs to a society, causes the
converted community to “experience itself as qualitatively different from all other
societies that have not taken the leap.”22 This experience of qualitative difference may be
found in Israel’s designation as God’s chosen people, the distinction between Christian
and Pagan, and perhaps even the distinction between Greek and Barbarian.
That the experience of this “leap in being” will have significant implications for
theorization on religious toleration now becomes readily apparent. This chapter may now
turn its attention to where the development of these implications shed light upon the
minimum dogmas found in the work of Locke. The remainder of this chapter will
continue to analyze Voegelin’s treatment of these issues as they are found in his
interpretation of Xenophanes’ insistence upon the “seemly” representation of the gods
and in his interpretation of Plato’s development of theology.
20
Ibid., 9-10.
Ibid., 10, cf. Plato’s parable of the cave in Plato, The Republic, Bk. 7 for an illustration
of this turn.
22
Voegelin, Order and History, 1: 10.
21
10
II.
Xenophanes’ Seemliness
Voegelin finds a precursor to Plato’s differentiation of theology, which in turn is a
precursor to the minimum dogmas of More, Spinoza, and Locke, in the surviving
fragments of the work of the pre-Socratic philosopher Xenophanes.23 Voegelin finds
Xenophanes remarkable as “the first to dare” to attack the creators of the panhellenic
body of myths, that is, an attack upon the poets. Voegelin then finds any assertion of a
truth in opposition to myth or analogical symbolization in the arena of Hellenic
civilization must necessarily do.24 Xenophanes’ attack was not directed against poetry as
poetry,25 but rather against the myth delivered by the poets, Homer and Hesiod for
instance, “as an obstacle to the adequate understanding of the order of the soul.” Poetic
form as poetic form was so far from question that Xenophanes himself “accepted it as the
adequate instrument for expressing his own truth.”26
Voegelin offers a useful survey of the relevant fragments of Xenophanes’ work:
We arrange the pertinent fragments in three groups:
23
Cf. Jaeger, “It is a feeling of reverence that leads Xenophanes to deny all the finite
shortcomings and limitations laid upon the gods by traditional religion, and makes him a
unique theological figure, despite his dependence on the views of the natural
philosophers. Only as a theologian, indeed, can he really be understood.” Werner Jaeger,
The Theology of the Early Greek Philosophers, tran. Edward S. Robinson (London:
Oxford, 1967), 49; with Burnet, “He [Xenophanes] was really Goethe’s Weltkind
[worldling], with prophets to right and left of him, and he would have smiled if he had
known that one day he was to be regarded as a theologian.” John Burnet, Early Greek
Philosophy, 4th ed. (London: Adam & Charles Black, 1930), 129. This contradiction is
less troubling in Voegelin’s treatment of Xenophanes’ work as a forerunner of Plato’s
theology without asserting anachronistically that Xenophanes was a theologian. Cf.
Gregory Vlastos, “Theology and Philosophy in Early Greek Thought,” The
Philosophical Quarterly 2, no. 7 (1952): 101 ff.
24
Eric Voegelin, Order and History, vol. 2, The World of the Polis (Baton Rouge: LSU,
1957), 171.
25
Voegelin remarks that this “bourgeois abstraction did not exist in Hellas.” Ibid.
26
Ibid.
11
(1) The attack itself was directed against the improper presentation of the
gods. “Homer and Hesiod have ascribed to the gods all things that are a shame
and disgrace among men, such as stealing, adultery and cheating each other” (B
11). The reason for such misrepresentation Xenophanes apparently sought and
found in the naiveté of the early poets. “Mortals suppose that gods are born, and
have clothes, voices and bodily forms like theirs” (B 14). Men create gods in
their image, down to racial differences: “Ethiopians make their gods flat-nosed
and black, the Thracians let theirs have blue eyes and red hair” (B 16). And if
horses and oxen and lions could make works of art like men ‘they would form
their gods horse-like and oxen-like, each after its own kind’ (B 15).
(2) To such fancies Xenophanes opposed his own conception of God:
“One God is greatest among gods and men, not like mortals in body or thought
[noema]” (B 23). The divine is a living being (zoon) though not of articulated
form, for “all through it sees, all through it thinks, all through it hears” (B 24).
Without any effort it sways all things through its thought (B 25). “It ever abides
in the self-same place and never moves; nor is it seemly [epiprepei] for it to go
now hither now thither” (B 26).
(3) Concerning source and certainty of his knowledge Xenophanes raised
no specific claims: “The gods did not grant knowledge of all things to mortals
from the beginning, but by seeking they find in time what is better” (B 18); and
“there never was nor will be a man who knows about the gods and all the things I
speak of. Even if by chance he should say the full truth, yet he would not know
that he does so; there is fancy in all things” (B 34).
We know nothing about the larger context of these fragments; each of
them must stand for itself. The arrangement in three groups does not reflect an
intention of their author.27
Voegelin explains how these fragments are to be interpreted:
The key to the understanding of the fragments lies in the word epiprepai
which [sic] means “it is seemly.” What Homer and Hesiod have to say about the
gods is unseemly; what Xenophanes has to say in his turn presumably is seemly.28
Voegelin does not find any specific criteria for seemliness within the fragments of
Xenophanes. As Fragments 18 and 34 (quoted by Voegelin in the third group above)
indicate an historical evolution in the criteria of seemliness and as “there is an element of
fancy (dokos) in assertions concerning gods and other things whereof Xenophanes
speaks,” Voegelin finds that “Xenophanes himself might even be exposed to charges
27
Ibid., 172; Voegelin notes that all quotations “refer to Diels-Kranz, Fragmente der
Vorsokratiker (7th ed., Berlin, 1954).” Voegelin, Order and History, 2: 171n.
28
Ibid., 172.
12
similar to the ones which he levels against Homer and Hesiod if the notions about
seemliness should change.” Voegelin finds such charges levied against Xenophanes “in
the next generation at the hands of Heraclitus.”29
After this discussion of evolutionary nature of the Xenophanes’ concept of
seemliness, Voegelin begins his examination of “the seemly and unseemly features
themselves.”30 Voegelin identifies three areas in which Xenophanes’ identifies
representations of divinity unseemly. The first, discussed above as a means of finding
Xenophanes’ work itself as unseemly, is that of fanciful representation. Following this is
Xenophanes’ finding the anthropomorphic representation of the gods by the poets to be
unseemly.31 The final area, closely related to the second in that Voegelin also finds it in
29
Ibid., 172-173.
Ibid., 174.
31
Ibid.; Voegelin gives closer attention to what is meant by “anthropomorphism” than
what is directly relevant to the current study. As Voegelin finds this discussion essential
to a proper understanding of his own thought on the matter, I will provide the passage
here.
“Xenophanes does not simply berate the poets because they attribute disgraceful
actions to the gods, but also develops a theory concerning the fallacy involved in them.
The gods, he opines, are endowed with improper attributes because man creates gods in
his image. This is the fallacy which modern sociologists call ‘anthropomorphism.’
According to Comte the history of human thought moves from anthropomorphic
theology, through metaphysics, to positive science. Xenophanes must be credited with
the formulation of the theory that the myth is an anthropomorphic representation of
divinity, to be superceded with the advance of insight by more appropriate symbols.
Since the theory has had far-reaching consequences, we must briefly examine the nature
of the problem.
The characterization of mythic symbolization as anthropomorphic is a theoretical
mistake. In the first place, the theory would require certain elementary emendations in
order to be debatable at all. Obviously, in the Greek myth the gods never were really
represented as human beings. The gods were distinguished through their immortality;
they were physiologically distinguished through their living on a special diet; and they
were endowed with a variety of nonhuman qualities such as superior knowledge and
strength, the ability to be invisible and to change their form; and so forth. To speak of
anthropomorphic representation of gods without such qualifications is as inapposite as to
find angels in a Renaissance painting represented ‘realistically,’ overlooking the minor
30
13
Xenophanes’ critical example that Thracians and Ethiopians worshipping gods that
appear to share their ethnic characteristics, is a demand that representations of the gods
be adequately universal.32
Voegelin is careful to note that this demand for universality does not equate to
monotheism. Voegelin explains:
It was the universality of the realissimum that made all idiosyncratic
representations of particular gods appear “unseemly.” Nevertheless, the gods who
were unseemly represented were still the gods; the unseemliness concerned their
representation, it did not concern their divinity. Xenophanes could well accept for
himself the saying attributed to Thales: “The world is full of gods.” The
universality of transcendence discovered by him did not abolish the old gods; it
only improved their understanding.33
Though Voegelin finds that Xenophanes is probably not a monotheist, he does find that
Xenophanes develops “the symbol of the ‘greatest god,’” found in the second grouping of
fragments above.34 Voegelin describes Xenophanes’ experience originating this symbol:
point that the representation of human-shaped creatures floating on clouds is in itself
unrealistic. As soon, however, as such emendations are made, and the meaning of
anthropomorphism is properly restricted to the representation of gods as beings who on
occasion assume human shape, and talk and act like men, we become aware of the
fundamental theoretical problem that such partial transfer of human qualities (which does
not affect the essential divinity of the gods) may have something to do with the idea
which man has of himself. Is it not probable, we may ask, that human qualities are
transferred to gods only as long as the spheres of the divine and human are not quite
clearly set off against each other? That ‘anthropomorphism’ is possible only as long as
the idea of man is not too clearly differentiated? That ‘anthropomorphism’ occurs only
when it cannot occur at all because an idea of man that could be transferred to the gods
has not yet developed? And that it tends to disappear precisely when a transferable idea
of man has been formed at last?” Ibid., 174-175.
32
Ibid., 178.
33
Ibid., 180.
34
Ibid.; Voegelin finds the terms “monotheism” and “polytheism” problematic because
they misconceive “the symbolization of divinity as a matter of theoretical systems.”
Voegelin recalls “a dictum of Goethe” to oppose “this rationalistic attitude.” This dictum
reads, “As a moralist I am a monotheist; as an artist I am a polytheist; as a naturalist I am
a pantheist.” Ibid., 179.
14
His genius has a peculiar spiritual directness which can be sensed in the glance at
the Heaven, followed by the assurance that the One is God. The most important
part of this account is for us the formulation of the assurance. God is perhaps not
one, but the One is the God. The experience is concerned with the One, and of
this One divinity is predicated.35
Voegelin’s exegesis of Xenophanes’ fragments illustrates a first move toward the
minimum dogma that appears later in the developed form of theology in the work of
Plato. This theology and its minimum dogma will be shown in this and subsequent
chapters to have a fundamentally different relation to religious toleration than the later
manifestations of minimum dogma found in the work of More, Spinoza, and Locke. The
following section of this chapter will examine Plato’s theology, and Voegelin’s treatment
of it in Order and History, with the purpose of developing a theoretical understanding of
minimum dogma useful in the analysis of these later manifestations.
III.
Plato’s Theology
Minimum dogma in the works of Plato first appears in the second book of The
Republic with Plato’s first use of the word theologia. In the dialogue Socrates says:
Adeimantus, you and I aren’t poets right now but founders of a city. It’s
appropriate for founders to know the models according to which the poets must
tell their tales. If what the poets produce goes counter to these models, founders
must not give way; however, they must not themselves make up tales.36
Adeimantus responds, “But, that is just it; what would the models for speech about the
gods [theologia] be.”37 Dialogue between Socrates and Adeimantus over what “models
for speech about the gods” should be produces two primary rules for censorship of the
poets. Following from the finding that the god is good “and, hence, must be said to be
so,” the dialogue partners find the rule that the god “is not the cause of everything [or
35
Ibid., 181.
Plato, The Republic, 378e-379a; all translations of The Republic are from Plato, The
Republic of Plato, 2d ed., tran. Allan Bloom (New York: Basic Books, 1991).
37
Plato, The Republic, 379a.
36
15
even many things]; rather it is the cause of the things that are in a good way, while it is
not responsible for the bad things.”38 The second rule arises when Socrates and
Adeimantus agree that the gods do not alter themselves or lie, primarily because they do
not need to.39
The minimum dogma encapsulated in this theology is not the only one found in
the work of Plato. In Book X of The Laws the Athenian Stranger enumerates a set of
minimum dogmas at the conclusion of the lengthy prelude [prooemium] to the proposed
city’s laws on piety:40
Shall we not assert, then, that the three provisions –that the gods exist, exercise
supervisory care, and are in every way not to be appeased in a manner contrary to
what is just –have been sufficiently demonstrated?41
Impiety is to be punished by imprisonment in one of two prisons according to whether
the one found guilty is of “a naturally just disposition.” If naturally just, they are to be
imprisoned in the “Moderation-Tank,” a prison near the meeting place of the Nocturnal
Council concerned with the city’s laws on impiety, “for no less than five years.” During
this time, the prisoners will be cut off from all contact except the Nocturnal Council “who
are to associate with them for the purposes of admonishment and the salvation of the
soul.” If after this time “someone among them should seem to be moderate,” then they
are to be freed. But if they have not been convinced to be pious or have not been made
moderate enough to seem to be so, then a further conviction of impiety will merit a death
38
Ibid., 379b-c.
Ibid., 383a.
40
For an examination of Plato’s use of Prooemium in The Laws see Eric Voegelin, Order
and History, vol. 3, Plato and Aristotle (Baton Rouge: LSU, 1957), 255-257.
41
Plato, The Laws, 907b; all translations of The Laws are from Plato, The Laws of Plato,
tran. Thomas L. Pangle (New York: Basic Books, 1980; reprint, Chicago: Chicago,
1988).
39
16
sentence. Those convicted without a “naturally just disposition” will be imprisoned “in
the middle of the country, in some spot that is deserted and as wild as possible.” Only
slaves may have contact with these prisoners. Further, when they die, they are to be
denied a proper burial.42
Neither of the minimum dogmas in Plato’s work expands the range of tolerance
for representations of divinity as do the minimum dogmas of More, Spinoza, and Locke.
Both function instead as restrictions of this range, specifically as a restriction of the
tolerance of what had become the dominant symbolization of the divine in Hellenic
society. In the passage constructing the minimum dogma of The Republic each provision
of the dogma is developed with examples of what must be censored in the poetry of
Homer and the Tragedians that constituted this dominant symbolization.43 Likewise, the
dogma of The Laws by which the attempt to bribe the gods against justice with sacrifices
is criminalized as impious attacks such attitudes prominent in his contemporary society.44
These two sets of minimum dogma are not to be understood as synonymous with
one another, however. Voegelin’s treatment of each of the minimum dogmas is helpful
in illustrating differences between the two that will aid in the understanding of later
minimum dogmas. Voegelin’s discussion of Plato’s theology and minimum dogma
found in The Republic appears in his treatment of the three pairs of concepts that
Voegelin finds Plato utilizing in his resistance to his surrounding corrupt society. The
first two “Platonic pairs of concepts” are constituted by the opposition of justice to
polypragmosyne (“the readiness to engage in multifarious activities which are not a
42
Plato, The Laws, 908a-909d.
Plato, The Republic, 379d-383c.
44
Plato, The Laws, 906b-907b; cf. Adeimantus’s speech in The Republic, 363c-365a.
43
17
man’s proper business”) and by the opposition of the philosophos (lover of wisdom) to
the philodoxos (lover of opinion). The passages relevant to this study are found in
Voegelin’s explanation of the third pair, the opposition of aletheia (truth) to pseudos
(falsehood).45
Voegelin finds that this “pair of concepts [which “refers to the true and false, or
proper and improper, presentation of the gods”] moves in the tradition of Xenophanes.”
Voegelin summarizes the history of this pair:
The pair of concepts has a long history. It was developed for the first time
by Hesiod when he opposed his true history of the gods to current false stories.
Xenophanes, then, sharpened the issue to the criteria of “seemliness” in the
symbolization of the gods, and rejected anthropomorphic symbols. Moreover, the
motivating experience became clear, that is, the discovery of universal humanity
which can be recognized as such only in relation to a universal transcendental
realissimum. The one, unseen, greatest god, who is the same for all men, is
correlative with a sameness of men that is now found in the sameness of their
transcendental experiences. Plato, finally, introduced the “types of theology” as
the conceptual instrument for clarifying the issue.46
Voegelin goes on to explain the importance of “true theology”:
True humanity requires true theology; the man with false theology is an
untrue man. ‘To be deceived or uninformed in the soul about true being [peri ta
onta]’ means that ‘the lie itself’ [hos alethos pseudos] has taken possession of ‘the
highest part of himself’ and steeped it into ‘ignorance of the soul’ (382a-b).47
Voegelin finds that the content of this “true theology” in the minimum dogma discussed
above. Voegelin’s finding of “truth” in this theology will be shown to be the key
difference with the minimum dogma found in The Laws.48
45
Voegelin, Order and History, 3: 63-67; though they are not directly pertinent to the
discussion of minimum dogma, Voegelin’s discussion of the first two pairs are interesting
in their own right, especially as a critique of the interpretation of Plato as a philosopher
aloof from the political activity.
46
Ibid., 67.
47
Ibid., 67-68.
48
Ibid., 68; cf. Bloom, “The first segment of the study of poetry constitutes, therefore, a
theology, a theology not true but salutary.” Plato, The Republic of Plato, 2d ed., tran.
18
The difference in the minimum dogmas in the two dialogues originates in the
difference in the cities constructed in each. The philosopher-kings in The Republic
served as a spiritual ordering force directly attuned to the divine. The emergence of
philosopher-kings was deemed unlikely in the dialogue, making the emergence of the
“best city” dependent upon the order offered by these “sons of God” also unlikely.49 The
city in The Laws is constructed to exist under more probable conditions. Rather than
being ruled by philosophers as the city in The Republic, the city in The Laws is merely
founded by one. The spiritual ordering force of philosophy is not embodied by it rulers,
but is instead mediated by its laws (nomoi).50
Voegelin describes the consequences of this shift:
In the polis of the nomoi, however, men are not the sons of god; they are his
puppets. On the lower existential level, which is presupposed for the citizenry,
the divine measure cannot be the living order of the soul; God and man have
drawn apart and the distance must now be bridged by the symbols of a dogma.
From the vision of the Agathon man has fallen to the acceptance of a creed. Plato
the savior has withdrawn; his polis cannot be penetrated by the presence of his
divine reality; Plato the founder of a religion is faced by the problem of how the
substance of his mystical communication with God can be translated into a dogma
with obligatory force.51
Plato’s response, which Voegelin finds to be similar to that of Spinoza (to be discussed in
the next chapter), is an “attempt to formulate a creed for the people” with “a minimum set
of dogmas that would leave the utmost liberty to individuals who might wish to embellish
the bare structure with details of their own, while it would be sufficient as a religious
Allan Bloom, 352; Bloom’s treatment may not be that of Strauss, “At any rate, the
conversation between Socrates and Adeimantus about theology shifts insensibly from the
demand for noble lies about the gods to the demand for the truth about the gods.” Leo
Strauss, The City and Man (Chicago: Chicago, 1964), 98.
49
Plato, The Republic, 473c-d, 488a ff.
50
Voegelin, Order and History, 3: 220-221.
51
Ibid., 263.
19
bond for the political community.”52 The divergence with The Republic’s minimum
dogma finally becomes clear in Voegelin’s finding that neither Plato nor Spinoza “needed
the dogma” for themselves, but instead they “created it deliberately … for the mass of
men whose spiritual strength is weak and who can absorb the spirit only in the form of
dogmatic symbols.”53 In other words, while the dogma found in The Republic is true
52
This comparison may obscure the relation of the two thinkers’ respective positions on
religious toleration. The analysis in the next chapter finds that the “creed for the people”
of Spinoza is constructed to convince the ruling aristocracy to tolerate the beliefs of those
they rule so long as those beliefs make their believers just and charitable. This toleration
would allow a community that shares the mysticism of Spinoza to emerge beneath the
aristocracy. This does not seem to be the case in The Laws. The minimum dogma there
is instituted to move the whole of society as near to the divine as a whole society might
move but does not move beyond what society as a whole is capable of. Plato and
Spinoza would probably end up in the “Moderation-Tank” should they attempt to form
any sort of community of mystics around themselves. Philosophers in this city are
solitary figures who must be moderate enough to keep their mouths shut or willing to
limit their dialogue to the Nocturnal Council. That is assuming that philosophy can
emerge at all under these conditions. The limitation of the exercise of philosophy to the
city in speech and to the democratic city in The Republic remains in The Laws. In this
light, Spinoza’s minimum dogma may be considered an institution democratic (in the
Platonic sense) in character while those of Plato cannot.
53
Ibid., 263-264; This difference inverts the difference Voegelin found in the myths
constructed in each dialogue in Anamnesis: “This question [“of the ‘adequacy’ of the
respective myth”] is of special importance to Plato, since in a concrete case he has
created two myths of which the later one is meant to be better. In the Politeia [The
Republic], having introduced the three types of the wise, the courageous, and the desirous
that form the three classes of the rulers, the warriors, and the producers, Plato inserts the
mythical story that the three human types are due to the gods having put either gold, or
silver, or iron into their various souls. This is the only myth of Plato that must be
classified as pragmatic. Plato himself does not ‘believe’ it, but uses it as a fable in the
polis to keep the lower classes quiet. In the Nomoi [The Laws], this pragmatic myth is
superseded by the ‘true’ myth of the golden threads by which the gods hold and guide
men like puppets, ruling all men in the same fashion. In place of the externalmechanistic distribution of good and lesser qualities to different human types, there is
now a myth of the nature of man as such, whose character is determined by his
willingness to yield himself to the pull of various noble threads. The second myth,
through the puppet symbol, ‘adequately’ finitizes the experience the experience of action
at the nodal point of determinants which we call, respectively, the ‘I’ and ‘worldtranscendent being.’ The first myth was ‘false’ because the Politeia system of myths as a
whole is geared toward the mystical type of man and neglects the differing inner tensions
20
even for philosophers, the dogma of The Laws is true only for everyone else. However,
for an order constituted in reality rather than in speech, this may have to be true enough.
IV.
Conclusion
Voegelin finds that the minimum dogma of The Laws represents the point were
the fervor for “seemly” symbols and “true” theology wrought by the experience of the
leap in being must moderate itself to the exigencies of existence. He writes in the
conclusion to the introduction of the first volume of Order and History:
Nevertheless, the leap upward in being is not a leap out of existence. The
emphatic partnership with God does not abolish partnership in the community of
being at large, which includes being in mundane existence. Man and society, if
they want to retain their foothold in being that makes the leap into emphatic
partnership possible, must remain adjusted to the mundane order of existence.54
There is awareness in the older Plato “that the new truth about being is not a substitute
for, but an addition to the old truth.”55
Beyond this awareness of the truth of the old myth, there is a concern for the
safeguarding of the order preserved by it. Voegelin concludes:
Moreover, there is a new awareness that an attack on the unseemly
symbolizations of order may destroy order itself with the faith in its analogies,
that it is better to see the truth obscurely than not at all, that imperfect attunement
to the order of being is preferable to disorder. The intolerance inspired by the
love of being is balanced by a new tolerance, inspired by the love of existence and
a respect for the tortuous ways on which man moves historically closer to the true
of the ‘common man’ so that the story of the metals was required as an external expedient
to hold together a human community consisting not only of mystics. The different
quality of the two myths makes itself also felt in that the first myth is emotionally wellnigh indifferent, while the puppet symbol in Plato’s representation evokes the awe of
transcendence, the ‘numinous’ in the sense of Rudolf Otto.” Eric Voegelin, Anamnesis,
tran. Gerhart Niemeyer (South Bend: Notre Dame, 1978; Columbia: Missouri, 1990), 2223.
54
Voegelin, Order and History, 1: 11.
55
Ibid.
21
order of being. In the Epinomis Plato speaks the last word of his wisdom –that
every myth has its truth.56
It is in this context of preferring an imperfect attunement to order to disorder that the shift
in purpose of minimum dogmas from the intolerance of Xenophanes and Plato to the
tolerance of the later theorists treated in this study is to be understood.
Each of the subsequent theorists in this study wrote in the context of a society
already differentiated by the leaps in being of Hellenic and Hebraic civilization. In this
context, minimum dogma ceased to be a useful tool in the elimination of unseemly
symbols since these symbols occurred in complex systems of theology developed by the
further differentiation, or, perhaps, in some cases degradation, of the minimum dogmas of
the initial break with cosmological symbolization. Complex theology now determined
seemliness and unseemliness, piety and impiety, rather than the simple theology of the
minimum dogmas. With this complexity arises contention, as fewer symbolizations of
the experience of the divine are deemed acceptable. In the wars of religion that formed
and followed the Protestant Reformation, this contention rose to the point that it
threatened the existence of the society that the contending theologies hoped to infuse with
meaning. In such circumstances, minimum dogma arises as a tool to lower the
requirements set by systems of theology upon representation of the divine in the interest
of finding an “imperfect attunement to the order of being is preferable to disorder.” The
following chapter examines two theorists whose work includes minimum dogmas with
this end in mind with the theoretical insights examined in this chapter.
56
Ibid.
22
CHAPTER TWO
MINIMUM DOGMA AND TOLERATION:
MORE AND SPINOZA
I.
Introduction
Plato’s minimum dogma and its antecedent, Xenophanes’ attack of the poets as
unseemly, both had the effect of restricting the field of tolerable representations of
transcendent truth. By the time of John Locke’s work centuries later, minimum dogma
had become a theoretical tool for the expansion of this same field. This chapter of the
study is dedicated to the investigation of this reversal. This investigation will begin with
a treatment of the religious toleration and minimum dogma found in More’s Utopia. This
treatment will be the most substantial because of the striking similarities between the
minimum dogma of the Utopians and that of Locke. Following this treatment will be an
investigation of the minimum dogma advocated in the work of Spinoza. The chapter will
conclude with a short comparison of the minimum dogmas of these two thinkers and that
of Locke. The more substantial treatment of Locke’s thought will be reserved for the
third chapter of this study.
II.
More’s Utopians
In his Utopia, St. Thomas More connects teachings on religious toleration to a
minimum dogma. Minimum dogmas and their antecedents discussed so far in this study
have had the aim of rendering fewer beliefs and actions tolerable to their host societies.
This aim is obviously in conflict with the purpose of the minimum dogma held by More’s
Utopians, the purpose of finding the maximum toleration of beliefs that may be safely
held by society. The similarity of this purpose to that of Locke in his Letter Concerning
23
Toleration indicates that a closer examination of these teachings in More’s Utopia may
be fruitful to the investigation of the works of Locke.57
More’s account of the minimum dogma and tolerance of the Utopians is found
under the heading, “On the Religions of Utopia,” in Book Two of Utopia. Raphael
Hythloday, the character whose description of Utopia More claims to retell in his Utopia,
recalls “a number of different religions in Utopia” with each city of the island containing
“adherents of different faiths.”58 Many of the Utopians are described as adhering to a
milieu of analogical symbols similar to that milieu found by Voegelin to exist before the
leap in being. Hythloday explains:
Some worship the sun as their god, others the moon, and others one of the planets.
Some Utopians believe that a certain human being, who was remarkable, long
ago, either for his virtue or his vanity, was not only a god, but the supreme god.59
57
Cf. Voegelin’s statement in his History of Political Ideas that “the construction of More
agrees in all essential points with the later Lockean idea of tolerance and the separation of
church and state.” The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin, ed. Ellis Sandoz, vol. 22,
History of Political Ideas, vol. 4, Renaissance and Reformation, ed. David L. Morse and
William M. Thompson (Columbia: Missouri, 1998), 117.
58
Sir Thomas More, Saint, Utopia, ed. and trans. David Wootton (Indianapolis: Hackett,
1999), 144.
59
Ibid., 144-145; This milieu is ameliorated by a certain degree of differentiation.
Hythloday explains: “Though all the other religions hold beliefs that differ from those of
the majority, they all agree that there is one supreme power responsible for the
construction of the universe and its fate. In the local language he is known by all as
Mithra. But they disagree among themselves in that they describe this spirit in different
ways. Each takes the characteristic that it believes to be most important and claims this is
the fundamental attribute of that supreme being whose absolute authority over creation is
recognized by the common consent of every nation. But slowly over time they are
abandoning the present variety of superstitions, and uniting in one religion, which seems
more rational than all the others. Indeed, there can be no doubt that the others would all
have disappeared long ago, if people thinking of changing their religion did not, out of
fear, interpret any unlucky event that occurred to them as a result not of chance but of
divine intervention, as if the god whose worship they were thinking of abandoning was
punishing the impiety they were planning to commit.” Ibid, 145.
24
However, Hythloday recounts that most Utopians, “including nearly all the wiser
citizens,” hold what may be considered a more differentiated position:
They believe there is one divinity, which is unknown, eternal, unmeasurable [sic],
inexplicable, beyond the capacity of man’s understanding, and present throughout
the universe, though not as a physical body, but rather through its influence. They
call it the parent of all that exists. The origins, progress, multiplication,
vicissitudes, and ends of all things they attribute to him alone, and they do not
worship any other being as divine.60
One is again forced to recall the preceding chapter’s presentation of Voegelin’s work
where such beliefs about divinity arose in order to oppose the preexisting milieu of
symbols. This is not the case for the otherwise similar Utopian beliefs.
Hythloday uses the occasion of the punishment of one of the many of the
Utopians who were enthusiastically converted when exposed to the teachings of
Christianity by Hythloday and his companions to explain the toleration of the Utopians.61
According to Hythloday, the new convert “began to preach the Christian religion in
public with more enthusiasm than good sense.” Though Hythloday and his companions
warned him “to be more prudent, …he grew more and more hot-headed [sic].”
Hythloday continues:
He not only maintained that our religion was better than any of theirs, but insisted
that theirs were worthless. He ranted away, saying that their religions were
wicked, and that those who believed in them were godless and sacrilegious, and
would be condemned to eternal damnation. After he had held forth in this manner
on numerous occasions they arrested him. They tried him, not for insulting their
religions, but for behavior likely to provoke a riot, found him guilty, and
sentenced him to exile. For they believe that one of the oldest principles,
respected by their legal system, is that no one should be punished for his religious
beliefs.62
60
Ibid., 145.
Ibid.
62
Wootton in a footnote here remarks, “By contrast, when More became Lord Chancellor
in 1529 he played a leading role in intensifying the persecution of Protestants.”
61
25
They attribute this principle to Utopos [the general credited with
conquering Utopia and founding its regime] himself and to the founding of
Utopia. For Utopos had heard that the natives, before his arrival, were in bitter
conflict over religious differences. And he recognized that where a community is
divided into conflicting sects, these sects are unable to cooperate to defend their
country against an outside attack, for it was this that had given him the
opportunity to defeat them one by one. Once he had conquered them, one of his
first decrees was that every individual should be free to follow the religion of his
or her choice, and even to make every effort to convert others to it, as long as he
makes the case for his own beliefs calmly and moderately and relies on rational
arguments. If urging the merits of his own religion proves ineffectual, he may not
bitterly attack the beliefs of others. He must abstain from abuse and must never
threaten violence. Anyone who blatantly enters into conflicts over religion is to
be punished with exile or slavery.63
Hythloday claims that this law was introduced “not only in order to ensure peace,
which he saw being utterly extinguished by constant conflicts and irreconcilable enmities,
but also because he believed such a law would serve in the interest of religion itself.”64
Hythloday explains Utopos’s reasoning:
In matters of faith he thought it would be foolhardy to dogmatize, for he
considered it possible that God wants to be worshipped in varied and diverse
ways, and so inspires different people to different faiths. In any event, he was
certain that to try to compel everyone else by means of threats and violence to
believe what you yourself happen to believe is both arrogant and ineffectual.65
If it was not the case “that God wants to be worshipped in varied and diverse ways,” that
is “that there is only one true religion, and all the rest are false,” Utopos was sure that the
truth religion would have the position of strength “as long as people confined themselves
to moderate and reasonable discussion.” Utopos feared that if people were not so
confined and “if riots and wars are allowed to decide the outcome, then, since the worst
63
Ibid., 146-147.
Ibid., 147.
65
Ibid.
64
26
men are often the most determined, the best and most sacred religion would die out,
smothered under foolish superstitions, just as wheat is overgrown by thorns and weeds.”66
The Utopians make two exceptions to the freedom of “each person … to believe
what he thinks right.” These constitute what, for the purposes of this study, will be
considered the minimum dogma of the Utopians. Utopos “solemnly and severely
forbade,” first, that “anyone to deny the fundamental dignity of his own nature to the
point of believing that the soul perishes with the body,” and, second, that anyone claim
“that the world is governed by mere chance and providence has no part to play.”67
Hythloday describes the reasoning behind this minimum dogma and its enforcement:
Thus they all believe that after we die our vices will be severely punished
and our virtues will be generously rewarded. Anyone who denies this they do not
think worthy to be called a human being, since in such a person’s opinion their
soul, which is truly sublime, is fundamentally no better than the foul body of a
mere beast. Even less are they willing to consider them as fellow citizen, for they
know that, but for the fear of punishment, they would have nothing but contempt
for the laws and customs of society. For who can doubt that someone who has
nothing to fear but the authorities, and who has no hope of surviving after death,
will not hesitate to break the communal laws of their own country for the sake of
some private advantage, as long as they think hey can avoid detection or can resist
arrest. Consequently, anyone who holds such views is barred from receiving any
honors, is condemned never to be promoted to any position of authority, and is
excluded from all positions where others would depend on them. Everyone treats
them as if they were congenitally worthless and good for nothing. But they
impose no punishment, for they are convinced that no one has the capacity to
freely choose what they believe. Nor do they bring pressure to bear on such
people to ensure that they conceal their convictions; on the contrary, they do not
tolerate any form of deceit or misrepresentation, and they loathe dissimulation, in
the belief that it is a short step from deception to crime. They merely forbid them
to muster arguments in support of their beliefs when they are in the presence of
the uneducated. But when they are alone with the priests and people of standing,
they not only permit them but positively encourage them to enter into debate, for
66
67
Ibid.
Ibid.
27
they sincerely believe that in the end even the mad will acknowledge the force of
superior arguments.68
The similarity of this minimum dogma to that found in Plato’s Republic (see the
preceding chapter), not to mention the remainder of the Utopian institutions, so obviously
reflects More’s familiarity with Plato’s work that a painstaking dissection of their
similarities is unnecessary. The minimum dogma of the Utopia makes a crucial break
with that of The Republic beyond the obvious difference in their contents; the two differ
in their proposed effect on society. Plato in effect restricts the representation of the
divine with his minimum dogma while that of the Utopians relaxes such restrictions, just
as that of Locke. It remains to be seen, however, whether More’s Utopia is in fact an
argument for such a move or if this expansion of toleration through minimum dogma is
merely a component of the dramatic action of the work.
More’s own position on the toleration and minimum dogma espoused by the
Utopians is open to debate. While biographical evidence, such as Wootton’s editorial
note of the role More took “in intensifying the persecution of Protestants” in England
upon becoming Lord Chancellor thirteen years after the publication of Utopia,69 is useful
in dispelling the most idealistic misinterpretations of the relevant texts of Utopia, such
evidence is insufficient for a definitive interpretation of More’s position. An examination
of the tension, ambivalence, and contradiction that More injects into his account of
Utopia is much more useful in this task.
The ambivalence of Utopia begins with the title of the work. The word “Utopia”
is a deliberately ambiguous transliteration from Greek with two different translations.
68
69
Ibid., 147-148.
Ibid., 146n.
28
The first, and more famous, translation, “No Place,” infuses the account of Utopia with
an irony that reaches a climax in one of the work’s earliest uses of the word, that is in
Hythloday’s question, “What if I should repeat to them the policies Plato describes in his
imaginary republic or tell them about what the Utopians actually do?”70 Ambivalence
returns, however, as the second translation, “Happy Place,” serves to undermine this
carefully crafted irony.71
More also injects irony into the text with Hythloday’s name, which may be
translated something like, “speaker of nonsense.” This irony in the account of Utopia is
again made ambivalent by More’s positioning himself as Hythloday’s dialectical
opponent. More depicts the character bearing his name as having doubts about
Hythoday’s approach to politics in Book One of Utopia and about Hythloday’s account
of Utopia in Book Two. While such positioning is typically interpreted as yet another
hint that Hythloday’s account is to be treated with a degree of skepticism, a subtler
reading indicates an additional layer to this positioning that again relieves this irony.
This layer is the play that may be made with More’s name, which when treated by the
same rules of translation as “Utopia” and “Hythloday” may be rendered as “Fool.” This
is rendering is more than plausible when one considers that More was already aware of
this rendering of his name from Erasmus’s Praise of Folly, a work published and
70
Ibid., 84; cf. Machiavelli’s statement: “But since my intent is to write something useful
to whoever understands it, it has appeared to me more fitting to go directly to the
effectual truth of the thing rather than to the imagination of it. And many have imagined
republics and principalities that have never been seen or known to exist in truth; for it is
so far from how one lives to how one should live that he who lets go of what is done for
what should be done learns his ruin rather than his preservation.” Niccolò Machiavelli,
The Prince, 2d ed., trans. Harvey C. Mansfield (Chicago: Chicago, 1998), 61.
71
That More intended both of these meanings for “Utopia” is confirmed in his included
“Poems of Utopia.” More, Utopia, 48.
29
dedicated to More only a few years before the dramatic setting of the Utopia. The
complexity of the relation of More to the Utopians’ beliefs on toleration becomes readily
apparent when one realizes that these beliefs are part of a retort by “Nonsense” to the
reasoning of “Folly.”
A critique of Eric Voegelin’s treatment of More’s Utopia and its minimum dogma
in his History of Political Ideas is valuable in the attempt to understand this complexity.
This treatment of More is the most substantial by Voegelin available, but suffers from
predating many of the most important phases in Voegelin’s scholarship as well as by
being part of a course of study abandoned by Voegelin due to what he deemed a fallacy
in approach.72 Voegelin finds that “the Utopia is a dialogue,” with his character
72
Cf. Eric Voegelin Autobiographical Reflections, ed. Ellis Sandoz (Baton Rouge: LSU,
1989), chap. 17; In the interest of an accurate representation of Voegelin’s position on
More, I must note that this study has found no evidence that Voegelin ever revisited his
position on More or that later breakthroughs in his scholarship ameliorated his position.
As late as Science, Politics, and Gnosticism, the publication of Voegelin’s inaugural
lecture at the University of Munich, Voegelin writes: “In his Utopia More traces the
image of man and society that he considers perfect. To this perfection belongs the
abolition of private property. Because he had the benefit of an excellent theological
education, however, More is well aware that this perfect state cannot be achieved in the
world. Man’s lust for possessions is deeply rooted in original sin, in superbia in the
Augustinian sense. In the final part of his work when More looks over his finished
picture, he has to admit that it would all be possible if only there were not the ‘serpent of
superbia.’ But there is the serpent of superbia –and More would not think of denying it.
This raises the question of the peculiar psychopathological condition in which a man like
More must have found himself when he drew up the mode of the perfect society in
history, in full consciousness that in could never be realized because of original sin.”
Eric Voegelin, Science, Politics, and Gnosticism, in The Collected Works of Eric
Voegelin, ed. Ellis Sandoz, vol. 5, Modernity Without Restraint, vol. 4, ed. Manfred
Henningsen (Columbia: Missouri, 2000), 305-306. This implication of a “peculiar
psychopathological condition” recalls his History of Political Ideas treatment. The
implication that something “smells” in the manner that the Utopians wage war comes to
mind. Voegelin, History of Political Ideas, 4:127-128. It must be further noted, though,
that Voegelin’s treatment of More beginning with Anamnesis lacks such attacks.
However, none of these treatments examined by this study reflect any repudiation of
30
representing “one side of his position” while Hythloday represents that side’s
counterarguments. Voegelin finds that the debate between these two sides “remains
inconclusive.”73 Voegelin’s assessment to this point is consistent with the findings of this
study; however, difficulties emerge with Voegelin’s further characterization of each side
of this debate.
Voegelin is not impressed with the distinction of the dialogue’s More “between
school philosophy (philsophia scholastica) and polite philosophy (philosophia civilor).”
Voegelin finds in this “polite philosophy,” which “knows its place, does not abstractly
hold a truth to be opportune in every situation, does not talk out of turn, and does not, like
a bad actor, disturb the play at hand,” what is today called “the argument of the
‘collaborator.’”74 Neither is Voegelin particularly impressed with the alternative offered
by Hythloday. As Voegelin finds that More the character’s argument is “disappointing
because it is opportunistic and dodges the spiritual issues,” Voegelin believes that
Hythloday, as the other partner in the dialogue, should properly address these issues.
Instead Voegelin finds only “the humanistic traveler who has withdrawn in resignation.”
Voegelin explains:
The tension as a whole occurs in the field of humanistic, political sentiments. The
true alternative, the life of the spirit, remains beyond the horizon.75
This avoidance of “life of the spirit” by More surprises Voegelin since “one would expect
that a man who existentially was on the verge of becoming a monk would understand the
Voegelin’s earlier work on More, nor are any of these treatments of significant length or
reflective of new work on More.
73
Voegelin, History of Political Ideas, 4:116; cf. Thomas S. Engeman, “Hythloday’s
Utopia and More’s England,” The Journal of Politics 44, no. 1 (1982): 135.
74
Voegelin, History of Political Ideas, 4: 115.
75
Ibid., 116.
31
problem of the ‘world’ and not attempt to evade it by argument that is an insult to
intelligence.”76
Voegelin attempts an explanation of this incongruity:
The key to this enigma can perhaps be found in a passage of the Utopia in
which Raphael describes the attitude of the islanders towards the members of a
strict, sectarian order that has formed among them. The Utopians tolerate this
order because they respect every conduct that is motivated by “religion” as long
as it does not disturb the more easygoing creed of the others. They themselves,
however, are hedonists and rationalists. “Anybody who would prefer celibacy to
matrimony, or a hard life to an easy one, as a matter of reason would be laughed
at.”77 Ratio and religio are opposed as principles of ordering conduct. The
utopian commonwealth lives by the order of reason; religion is reduced to a
deistic minimum dogma consisting of the existence of God, the immortality of the
soul, punishment and reward in the beyond, and the rule of Providence.78 And
even this minimum dogma is retained only for the utilitarian reason that without it
the laws of the commonwealth might not be sufficient to keep the good people on
the narrow path.79 The construction of More agrees in all essential points with the
later Lockean idea of tolerance and the separation of church and state. The
official Deism with its rites, but without a systematic theology that may stir up
problems, lets everybody believe what he wants, provided that he does not claim
public recognition. Assuming the obvious, that nobody can conceive and with
loving care elaborate this idea unless it occupies his imagination intensely, we
may say that the idea of the Christianitas as the mystical body of Christ,
articulated into its spiritual and temporal orders with equal public rank, had lost
its hold over the sentiments of More at least to the degree that, at least in this
phase of his life, the spiritual order was no longer experienced as a representative
public order in the commonwealth. The life of the spirit had become a private
affair and, since as a mystic his personality was not strong enough to stand for
itself, the temporal order had become the secular commonwealth, with the
76
Ibid.
Voegelin here cites Joseph F Lupton’s The Utopia of Thomas More (Oxford, 1895),
282; this corresponds to Sir Thomas More, Saint, Utopia, ed. and trans. David Wootton,
150.
78
Voegelin here cites Lupton’s The Utopia of Thomas More, 274; this corresponds to Sir
Thomas More, Saint, Utopia, ed. and trans. David Wootton, 147.
79
Voegelin here in a footnote relates the previously discussed incident of the overzealous
convert to Christianity. He finds: “The point is that the culprit was removed, not because
he cast aspersions on the established religion, but because he stirred up the people (reus
excitati in populo tumultus). The scene foreshadows the program that later was treated
by Dostoevsky in the Grand Inquisitor (Utopia, ed. Lupton, 270).” This citation
corresponds to Sir Thomas More, Saint, Utopia, ed. and trans. David Wootton, 146.
77
32
monopoly of public representation, retaining as much of Christian traditions as
historical circumstances had left at the moment.80
This study contends that the tension in the dialogue of Utopia has more spiritual
depth than Voegelin acknowledges. Key to understanding this depth is the utter lack of
the Christian concept of “Grace” in Hythloday’s account of Utopia. The Utopians are
converted to Christianity after hearing Hythloday and his companions “speak of Christ
and describe his teaching, his way of life, and the miracles he performed, and recount the
equally extraordinary constancy of so many martyrs, whose blood, willingly shed, has
brought so many nations, scattered far and wide, to adopt their religion.”81 Noticeably
absent from this list is any mention of Christ’s Crucifixion or Resurrection, the Apostles’
teachings, or doctrines related to grace such as Atonement. The Eucharist, the central
subject of More’s later polemics against the Reformation of England and the medium for
delivering grace in Catholic theology,82 may be included by implication when Hythloday
mentions the Utopians need for a Christian bishop “to confer upon them those sacraments
which we believe can be administered only by a priest,” but this mention is an
insufficient basis to contradict the finding of an absence of grace, especially when further
evidence is considered.83
Three pieces of evidence, in particular, causes one to doubt that the Utopians
could even understand the imagery of the Eucharist or the atonement of sin imparted by it
for three reasons. First, the Utopian religion has no experience of atonement through
80
Voegelin, History of Political Ideas, 4: 116-117.
More, Utopia, 145.
82
For a useful analysis of More’s polemics see “Thomas More as a Controversialist” in
the Introduction in The Complete Works of St. Thomas More, ed. J.B. Trapp, vol. 9, The
Apology (New Haven: Yale, 1979), xix-xli.
83
More, Utopia, 146.
81
33
sacrifice upon which to build a theology of atonement through Christ’s death and
resurrection. Hythloday recounts the Utopian view of animal sacrifice, “They slaughter
no animals during their ceremonies, for they do not believe that a merciful God, who
bestowed life on living creatures so that they might live, can take pleasure in bloodshed
and slaughter.”84 Given this view, it is doubtful that they would believe that a merciful
God would require the blood of His Son for the wrongs of others. The second piece of
evidence is that the Christian concept of grace may not be tolerated by the Utopians’
minimum dogma. Hythloday says that all the Utopians “believe that after we die our
vices will be severely punished and our virtues will be generously rewarded.”85 This does
not square that easily with the Christian idea of redemption through grace by which vices
may be forgiven. Finally, there is reason to doubt that the Utopians even need grace.
Utopia represents a society built without the “serpent of hell” that is pride (superbia).86
Theologically this is the original sin that requires redemption through grace. Lacking
original sin, the Utopians may thus lack the need for grace.87
The lack of grace in Hythloday’s account acts in dialectical tension with the
overabundance of grace that More’s “polite philosophy” allows to itself. More is well
aware of the problems of the side of the dialogue that he attributes to himself; he does not
need the memory of Vichy collaboration to know the danger of “polite philosophy.” One
may surmise that More finds neither the infinitely forgivable compromise demanded by
his own voice nor the perfection demanded by Hythloday’s satisfactory, hence their
84
Ibid., 154.
Ibid., 147.
86
Ibid., 158-159.
87
For further analysis of the incompatibility of Christianity with Utopian society see
Engeman, 141-142.
85
34
attribution to the respective voices of “folly” and “nonsense.” The tension thus created is
not confined to “the field of humanistic, political sentiments,” but rather constitutes a
demand for an answer beyond this field. 88
It is within this context that More’s position relative to the Utopian religious
toleration and minimum dogma must be explored. First, it is doubtful that More believed
that toleration, as practiced by the Utopians, would be suitable for a world where people
were still driven by pride. Even if had More shared Utopos’s confidence that, “as long as
people confined themselves to moderate and reasonable discussion, the truth would have
the advantage and would eventually prevail,” he would have no confidence that, in a
world full of the proud, people would so confine themselves. And since in the world of
the proud constituting reality “riots and wars are allowed to decide the outcome,” then
More knows that “the best and most sacred” religion’s only hope, short of divine
intervention, is that better men are more determined than the worst.89 Second, if, as this
study concluded above, More intends the dialectical tension of Utopia to point beyond
the field of “humanistic, political sentiments” to a life of the spirit, then it is also doubtful
More wishes to foster any sort of secular, proto-Lockean civil society. The similarity of
the ideas advocated by Hythloday to those of Locke, far from indicating More’s advocacy
88
This analysis of the tension in More’s Utopia is indebted to the tensions between love
and justice, between creature and creator, and within grace explored by the work of
Reinhold Niebuhr. Of particular value are his essays “The Power and Weakness of God,”
“The Assurance of Grace,” “Why the Christian Church Is Not Pacifist,” and “Augustine’s
Political Realism.” The Essential Reinhold Niebuhr: Selected Essays and Addresses, ed.
Robert McAfee Brown (New Haven: Yale, 1986), 21-32, 61-71, 102-119, 123-141; for
an interpretation of Niebuhr’s work see Cecil L. Eubanks, “Reinhold Niebuhr: The
Dialectics of Grace and Power,” The Political Science Reviewer 8 (Fall 1978): 63-102.
89
More, Utopia, 147; Though Utopia predates the Protestant Reformation’s religious
wars, the recently completed (1492) Christian reconquest of the entirety of Spain and the
textual evidence that the More was well aware of the part force had to play in religion.
35
of a Lockean regime, probably indicates that More would also find these ideas
unsatisfactory, and more, that he might go so far as to find in Locke another speaker of
“nonsense.”
III.
Spinoza’s Minimum Dogma
This study found More notable for joining the ideas of minimum toleration to
those of toleration. Spinoza will be found notable for going beyond More by advocating
this conjunction explicitly, rather than as a component of a dialogue, and, additionally, by
not believing in the minimum dogma he espouses.90 Before delving further into these
remarkable traits, it is necessary to examine exactly what Spinoza’s minimum dogma
entails and how it interacts with Spinoza’s teachings on toleration.
Spinoza constructs his minimum dogma in the fourteenth chapter of A
Theologico-Political Treatise. There he finds that “faith consists in a knowledge of God,
without which obedience to Him would be impossible, and which the mere fact of
obedience implies.” He further finds “that faith does not demand that dogmas should be
true as that they should be pious.” Following this then, Spinoza has “no further fear” in
finding that “the dogmas of the universal faith” all tend only to the doctrine “that there
exists a God, that is, a Supreme Being, Who loves justice and charity, and Who must be
obeyed by whosoever would be saved; [and] that the worship of this Being consists in the
practice of justice and love towards one’s neighbour.”91
90
The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin, ed. Ellis Sandoz, vol. 25, History of Political
Ideas, vol. 7, The New Order and the Last Orientation, ed. Jürgen Gebhardt and Thomas
A. Hollweck (Columbia: Missouri, 1999), 134-135.
91
Benedict de Spinoza, A Theologico-Political Treatise, chap. 14; All translations from
Benedict de Spinoza, A Theologico-Political Treatise and A Political Treatise, tran. R. H.
M. Elwes (New York: Dover, 1951).
36
These “dogmas of the universal faith” consist exclusively of the following seven
doctrines. (1) “God or a Supreme Being exists,” and “whoever is ignorant of or
disbelieves in His existence cannot obey him…” (2) God “is One” since “devotion,
admiration, and love spring from the superiority of one over all else.” (3) God is either
omnipresent or “all things are open to Him, for if anything could be supposed concealed
from Him, we might doubt or be ignorant of the equity of His judgment as directing all
things.” (4) “All things are bound to obey” God, yet God “is not bound to obey any.”
(5) “…The worship of God consist only in justice and charity, or love towards one’s
neighbour.” (6) All those, but only those, “who obey God by their manner of life are
saved….” The “rest of mankind” is lost. “If we did not believe this, there would be no
reason for obeying God rather than pleasure.” (7) “…God forgives the sins of those who
repent.” This is necessary because “without this belief all would despair of salvation”
since “no one is free from sin….”92
Spinoza justifies all of these doctrines, with the exception of the fifth, on the
grounds that they lead to obedience. This fifth doctrine, in which Spinoza claims to
describe the worship of God in its entirety, explains the content of this obedience that is
the aim of the remainder of the doctrines. Considering these doctrines as a whole, it
seems that the entire minimum dogma exists solely to encourage justice and “love
towards one’s neighbour.” The utility of such dogma, coupled with Spinoza’s earlier
finding “that faith does not demand that dogmas should be true as that they should be
pious,” not to mention his teachings in his Ethics, leads to the conclusion that Spinoza
does not believe the minimum dogma he espouses. Voegelin explains the danger of this:
92
Ibid.
37
The position of Spinoza differs, moreover, from that of his predecessors [the
previous formulators of minimum dogma] insofar as he himself did not believe in
the minimum dogma but advanced it as a bit of exoteric political advise for the
satisfaction of the multitude. The ideas of Spinoza are, therefore, the first high
point of the new development, indicated previously,93 toward psychological
management of the masses by playing on their convictions in order to keep them
satisfied, while the player himself does not necessarily share them.94
This totalitarian tendency, in which “the statesman” becomes “the spiritual director of the
people,” found by Voegelin in Spinoza’s minimum dogma, is explained by Voegelin as a
symptom of an evolution toward the totalitarian regimes of the twentieth century that
began with “the breakdown of church civilization that could integrate the primitive image
worshipper and the imageless mystic in one spiritual whole.”95
Spinoza’s mysticism is central to Voegelin’s entire interpretation of his work as
found in his History of Political Ideas. Voegelin even introduces his chapter on Spinoza
with Novalis’s claim, “Spinoza ist ein gottrunkener Mensch.”96 This “God-intoxication”
of Spinoza begins in a mystic ascent recounted in On the Improvement of the
Understanding. Spinoza writes, “After experience had taught me that all the usual
surroundings of social life are vain and futile; seeing that none of the objects of my fears
93
See Voegelin, History of Political Ideas, 7: 70.
Voegelin, History of Political Ideas, 7: 135; cf. Machiavelli, The Prince, chap. 18, for
what might also be justified as such a highpoint; Voegelin repudiates the claim that
Spinoza was the first to do this and softens this treatment of Spinoza’s minimum dogma
in his later treatment of The Laws of Plato as discussed in the previous chapter of this
study: “Of particular interest is his [Spinoza’s] attempt to formulate a creed for the
people. He tried to solve his problem through the creation of a minimum set of dogmas
that would leave the utmost liberty to individuals who might wish to embellish the bare
structure with details of their own, while it would be sufficient as a religious bond for the
political community. Moreover, Spinoza the mystic needed the dogma for himself no
more than Plato, but created it deliberately, as did Plato, for the mass of men whose
spiritual strength is weak and who can absorb the spirit only in the form of dogmatic
symbols.” Voegelin, Order and History, 3: 263-4.
95
Voegelin, History of Political Ideas, 7: 135.
96
Ibid., 126.
94
38
contained in themselves anything either good or bad, except in so far as the mind is
affected by them, I finally resolved to inquire whether there might be some real good
having power to communicate itself, which would affect the mind singly, to the exclusion
of all else; whether, in fact, there might be anything of which the discovery and
attainment would enable me to enjoy continuous, supreme, and unending happiness.”97
In this inquiry, Spinoza determines that “love towards a thing eternal and infinite feeds
the mind wholly with joy, and is itself unmingled with any sadness.”98 Spinoza identifies
this object of love with the whole of Nature.99 Spinoza goes one to describe the
mankind’s “chief good”:
The chief good is that he should arrive, together with other individuals if possible,
at the aforesaid character [“a human character much more stable than his own”].
What that character is we shall show in due time, namely, that it is the knowledge
of the union existing between the mind and the whole of nature. This, then, is the
end for which I strive, to attain to such a character myself, and to endeavor that
many should attain to it with me. In other words, it is part of my happiness to
lend a helping hand, that many others may understand even as I do, so that their
understanding and desire may entirely agree with my own. In order to bring this
about, it is necessary to understand as much of nature as will enable us to attain
the aforesaid character, and also to form a social order such as most conducive to
the attainment of his character by the greatest number with the least difficulty and
danger.100
It is in this context of securing a social order “with the least difficulty and danger” that
both Spinoza’s spiritually manipulative minimum dogma and his advocacy of toleration
are to be understood. With this in mind, the complex of minimum dogma and toleration
in Spinoza’s thought can be examined in its entirety.
97
Benedict de Spinoza, Ethics Including the Improvement of the Understanding, tran. R.
H. M. Elwes (Amherst, N.Y.: Prometheus, 1989), 1.
98
Ibid., 3.
99
Ibid., 4.
100
Ibid., 4-5; this treatment of Spinoza’s mysticism closely follows that of Voegelin in
Voegelin, History of Political Ideas, 7: 127-128.
39
This complex is formed when Spinoza incorporates his minimum dogma his
minimum dogma into the aristocratic regime in A Political Treatise. Spinoza details this
accomplishment:
Matters concerning religion we have set forth at sufficient length in our
Theologico-Political Treatise. Yet certain points we then omitted, of which it was
not there the place to treat; for instance, that all the patricians must be of the same
religion, that is, of that most simple and general religion, which in that treatise we
described. For it is above all to be avoided, that the patricians themselves should
be divided into sects, and show favour, some to this, and others to that, and thence
become mastered by superstition, and try to deprive the subjects of the liberty to
speak out his opinion, yet great conventicles [sic] are to be forbidden. And,
therefore, those that are attached to another religion are, indeed, to be allowed to
build as many temples as they please; yet these are to be small, and limited to a
certain standard of size, and on sites at some little distance one from another. But
it is very important, that the temples consecrated to the national religion should be
large and costly, and that only patricians or senators should be allowed to
administer its principal rites, and thus that patricians only be suffered to baptize,
celebrate marriages, and lay on hands, and that in general they be recognized as
the priests of the temples and the champions and interpreters of the national
religion. But, for preaching, and to manage the church treasury and its daily
business, let some persons be chosen from the commons by the senate itself, to
be, as it were, the senate’s deputies, and, therefore, bound to render it account of
everything.101
With this incorporation of minimum dogma as the state religion of the aristocracy,
Spinoza’s program may now be assessed in full.
Spinoza’s spiritual manipulation is not concerned primarily with the masses but
with the ruling aristocracy of the regime he advocates.102 The purpose of the
manipulation of the minimum dogma, as discussed above, was to make its believers
obedient to a god who is properly worshipped only by pursuing justice and the love of
one’s neighbor. Further, other dogmas with the same effect are to be left alone. The
101
Benedict de Spinoza, A Political Treatise, 8.46.
This is not enough to free Spinoza of the charges of nascent totalitarianism, however.
One must recall that in the totalitarian regime portrayed in George Orwell’s 1984 the
masses, the “proles,” were left without ideological indoctrination. One must dig deeper
to clear this charge.
102
40
intended effect of the minimum dogma is to provide a sufficient spiritual cohesion for
society’s aristocracy (with the assistance of grandiose temples and other measures) so
that the remainder of society will be left alone as long as they are just and charitable.
Spinoza apparently hopes that room will be found beneath the aristocracy within this
remainder for himself and “the greatest number” to pursue “with the least difficulty and
danger” the mystical “knowledge of the union existing between the mind and the whole
of nature.”
IV.
Conclusion
First, it is important to note that no direct connection of the thought of Locke with
the thought of More or Spinoza is meant to be implied by this chapter. Neither is such a
connection necessary in order for the analysis done in this chapter to be fruitful in the
investigation of the minimum dogma of Locke, nor is such a connection tenable,
especially in the case of Spinoza. In his Second Reply to the Bishop of Worcester Locke
writes:
I am not so well read in Hobbes or Spinosa [sic] as to be able to say what
were their opinions in this matter. But possibly there be those, who will think
your lordship’s authority of more use to them in the case than those justly decried
names; and be glad to find your lordship a patron of oracles of reason, so little to
the advantage of the oracles of divine revelation.103
The preceding analysis of the minimum dogmas in the work of More and Spinoza is
meant to further develop theoretical tools for the analysis of the minimum dogmas found
in the work of Locke.
103
The Collected Works of John Locke, vol. 4 (London: 1823), 477; cf. Leo Strauss,
Natural Right and History (Chicago: Chicago, 1953), 209-212 and John Locke, Two
Treatises of Government, ed. with an introduction by Peter Laslett (Cambridge:
Cambridge: 1988), 74, where the truth of Locke’s statement here is found questionable.
41
In the analysis of the minimum dogma of the Utopians this study found an
instance of a minimum dogma instituted for the purpose of preserving the peace of
society rather than the purpose of preserving the achievement of clarity about the truth of
existence. The preservation of peace will be found in the next chapter to be the explicit
purpose behind the minimum dogma advocated by Locke in his Letter Concerning
Toleration and the probable purpose behind the minimum dogma found in his
Reasonableness of Christianity. However, the closer analysis of More’s work in Utopia
indicates that the minimum dogma of the Utopians is intended to be only one pole in a
tension, which beyond offering a viable alternative to such minimum dogma, points away
from the entire field in which this minimum dogma is a sensible solution.
The analysis of Spinoza’s minimum dogma did not find the ambiguity in the
advocacy of minimum dogma found in the analysis of More. This does not necessarily
place Spinoza in a position of agreement with Locke, however. Though the minimum
dogmas of both thinkers have an immediate end in promoting a safe and stable society,
Locke’s minimum dogmas lack the Spinoza’s ultimate end of a mystical attainment of
knowledge. Locke does not have any great concern either for the importance of spiritual
cohesion or for the piety of those that rule. Analysis beyond these differences will be
addressed in the subsequent chapter.
42
CHAPTER THREE
MINIMUM DOGMA, TOLERATION, AND LOCKE
I.
Introduction
The minimum dogma found in the work of John Locke represents a break in the
form of minimum dogma that has occupied this study so far. Each of the previous
manifestations of minimum dogma at least had the end of adequately representing the
divine or of sheltering such representation, with the possible exception of the minimum
dogma of the Utopia. John Locke’s Letter Concerning Toleration (1685) finds that
government is “constituted only for the procuring, preserving, and advancing of… civil
interests… [such as] life, liberty, health, and indolency [sic] of the body; and the
possession of outward things…”104 He finds that the jurisdiction of the magistrate
“neither can nor ought in any manner to be extended” beyond these things “to the
salvation of souls.”105 Building upon this division of civil and religious interests, Locke
concludes that religious belief and practice that does not interfere with civil interests
should be tolerated. The minimum dogma found in Locke’s Letter Concerning Toleration
is constructed to illustrate which religious beliefs should be excluded from toleration on
the basis that they do interfere with civil interest. This minimum dogma is constructed
solely for civil ends and, therefore, breaks the preexisting form of minimum dogma as
device for protecting an adequate representation of divinity.
This is not the only instance of minimum dogma in the writings of Locke,
however. Corresponding to Locke’s division of religious from civil interests is the
delivery of a minimum dogma with ostensibly religious concerns separate from the
104
105
The Works of John Locke, 6: 5.
Ibid., 10.
43
previously mentioned minimum dogma with civil concerns. However, this minimum
dogma, found in The Reasonableness of Christianity as Delivered in the Scriptures
(1695), so conveniently supports Locke’s civil aims that it can only with great hesitance
be likened to previous formulations of minimum dogma. The interaction of the two
minimum dogmas of Locke within the realm of civil interests will be the concern of the
remainder of this chapter.
II.
Locke’s Civil Dogma
As mentioned in the introduction above, Locke finds that government is instituted
only for the advancement of civil interests, of which religious interests take no direct part.
Locke does find that religious interests may take an indirect part in civil interests since
certain religious beliefs conflict with civil interests. Locke’s minimum dogma in A Letter
Concerning Toleration identifies beliefs he finds contrary to civil interests and refuses
them the toleration offered to all remaining beliefs.106 Initially, Locke states that the
106
Locke considers religious beliefs in isolation from religious practices: “But as in every
church there are two things especially to be considered; the outward form and rites of
worship, and the doctrines and articles of faith; these things must be handled distinctly,
that so the whole matter of toleration may the more clearly be understood.” Ibid., 29; this
chapter will treat Locke’s minimum dogma of religious beliefs only since the grounds he
offers for excluding religious practice are neither complicated nor particularly related to
the remainder of this study: “You will say, by this rule [that “the magistrate has no
power” to impose or forbid the use of any rites or ceremonies], if some congregations
should have a mind to sacrifice infants, or, as the primitive Christians were falsely
accused, lustfully pollute themselves in promiscuous uncleanness, or practice any other
such heinous enormities, is the magistrate obliged to tolerate them, because they are
committed in a religious assembly? I answer, No. These things are not lawful in the
ordinary course of life, nor in any private house; and, therefore, neither are they so in the
worship of God, or in any religious meeting. But, indeed, if any people congregated on
account of religion, should be desirous to sacrifice a calf, I deny that that ought to be
prohibited by a law. Melibœus, whose calf it is, may lawfully kill his calf at home, and
burn any part of it that he thinks fit: for no injury is thereby done to any one, no prejudice
to another man’s goods. And for the same reason he may kill his calf also in a religious
44
magistrate should refuse toleration to “opinions contrary to human society, or to those
moral rules which are necessary to the preservation of civil society.”107 Locke finds such
instances rare “for no sect can easily arrive to such a degree of madness,” so closer
attention should be given to the components of the dogma that follow.108
Three components of dogma follow this first provision. First, no one is to be
allowed to “arrogate to themselves, and to those of their sect, some peculiar prerogative,
covered over with a specious show of deceitful words, but in effect opposite to the civil
rights of the community.”109 This provision, targeted at the level of practical politics
against English Catholics, refuses toleration to teachings such as “faith is not to be kept
with heretics” and “kings excommunicated forfeit their crowns and kingdoms.”110
Second, “that church can have no right to be tolerated by the magistrate, which is
constituted upon such a bottom, that all those who enter into it, do thereby, ipso facto,
deliver themselves up to the protection and service of another prince.”111 Locke gives an
example of belief not to be tolerated, probably directed against English Catholics:
It is ridiculous for anyone to profess himself to be a Mahometan [sic] only in
religion, but in everything else a faithful subject to a Christian magistrate, whilst
at the same time he acknowledges himself bound to yield blind obedience to the
mufti of Constantinople; who himself is entirely obedient to the Ottoman
emperor, and frames the famed oracles of that religion according to his pleasure.
But this Mahometan [sic], living amongst Christians, would yet more apparently
renounce their government, if he acknowledged the same person to be head of his
church, who is the supreme magistrate in the state.112
meeting.” Ibid., 33-34; cf. the jurisprudence on the Free Exercise Clause of the First
Amendment to the American Constitution.
107
Ibid., 45.
108
Ibid.; Locke may have in mind here Levelers and similar movements.
109
Ibid.
110
Ibid, 45-46.
111
Ibid., 46.
112
Ibid., 47.
45
Third, Locke denies toleration to atheists, as “promises, covenants, and oaths, which are
the bond of human society, can have no hold upon an atheist.”113
Problems emerge in Locke’s break with the form of previous minimum dogmas.
Since Locke’s minimum dogma is derived solely from the purpose of protecting civil
interests and has no relation to the truth or falsehood of the beliefs Locke refuses or
admits toleration, Locke must account for the situation of someone who finds beliefs true
that he does not tolerate. Locke writes concerning this situation:
But some may ask, “What if the magistrate should enjoin any thing by his
authority, that appears unlawful to the conscience of a private person?” I answer,
that if government be faithfully administered, and the counsels of the magistrate
be indeed directed to the public good, this will seldom happen. But if perhaps it
do so fall out, I say, that such a private person is to abstain from actions that he
judges unlawful; and he is to undergo the punishment, which is not unlawful for
him to bear; for the private judgment of any person concerning a law enacted in
political matters, for the public good, does not take away the obligation of that
law, nor deserve a dispensation.114
It is doubtful, however, that many people can be expected to willingly accept such
punishment. This necessitates that Locke frame his arguments concerning his minimum
dogma for civil interests as consistent with his surrounding Christian society.
Locke begins his Letter Concerning Toleration with the statement, “I esteem that
toleration to be the chief characteristical [sic] mark of the true Church.”115 Locke
explains his foundation for such a finding:
For whatsoever some people boast of the antiquity of places and names, or of the
pomp of their outward worship; others, of the reformation of their discipline; all,
of the orthodoxy of their faith (for everyone is orthodox to himself): these things,
and all others of this nature, are much rather marks of men striving for empire
over one another, than of the Church of Christ. Let anyone have never so true a
claim to all these things, yet if he be destitute of charity, meekness, and good-will
in general towards all mankind, even to those who are not Christians, he is
113
Ibid.
Ibid., 43.
115
Ibid., 5.
114
46
certainly yet short of being a true Christian himself. “The kings of the Gentiles
exercise Lordship over them, [sic] said our Saviour to his disciples, but [sic] ye
shall not be so, Luke xxii. 25, 26. [sic]116
Locke reasons further on the same line, “If Christians are to be admonished that they
abstain from all manner of revenge, even after repeated provocations and multiplied
injuries, how much more ought they to suffer nothing, who have had no harm done them,
forbear violence, and abstain from all manner of ill-usage towards those from whom they
have received none!”117
Locke’s interpretation of Christianity as a religion distinguished by its toleration
has an obvious derivation from a number of passages of scripture. Locke’s address on
the Christian admonition against revenge seems to take into account the commands of
Jesus found in the “Sermon on the Mount” such as:
Do not resist an evil person; but whoever slaps you on the right cheek, turn the
other to him also. If anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, let him have
your coat also. Whoever forces you to go one mile, go with him two.” (Matthew
5:39-41 UNASB)
The distinction noted above that Locke finds between the care of the soul and the care of
the commonwealth seems to take account Jesus’ reply to the Pharisees, “Then render to
Caesar the things that are Caesar’s; and to God the things that are God’s,” (Matthew 22:
21 UNASB) and his reply to Pilate, “My kingdom is not of this world. If My kingdom
were of this world, then My servants would be fighting so that I would not be handed
over to the Jews; but as it is, My kingdom is not of this realm.” (John 19: 36 UNASB)
Locke’s use of such Christian teachings is not without difficulties, however.
While these teachings do have many of the implications for religious toleration indicated
by Locke, they also have implications that undermine Locke’s other political teachings.
116
117
Ibid.
Ibid., 22.
47
There is no logic by which a strict insistence upon these admonitions may be made
concerning religious toleration without also applying these teachings to civil interests. If,
on the one hand, “the commonwealth seems … to be a society of men constituted only
for the procuring, preserving, and advancing their own civil interests.” And “civil
interest” is limited to “life, liberty, health, and indolency [sic] of body; and the possession
of outward things, such as money, lands, houses, furniture, and the like,” then it is
difficult to imagine one consistently obedient to commands to “turn the other [cheek] to
him also,” “let him have your coat also,” and “go with him two [miles],” ever entering
into any such society.118 If, on the other hand, it is permissible for Christians to
compromise the commands of Christ for the sake of constituting the commonwealth, then
one might also question whether it might be permissible for the Christian to compromise
the commands upon which Locke bases the command to tolerate, perhaps even for the
same purpose of constituting the commonwealth. Locke himself makes just such a
compromise when he fails to extend toleration in his minimum dogma to religious
groups, atheists and Muslims explicitly and by implication “Catholics, …Antinomians,
and Levelers.”119
Locke must also contend with the possibility of a government that has grown
dependent upon the religious consensus of its citizens. In such a condition, deviation
from the consensus undermines the grounds upon which the government is built. Heresy
becomes equivalent to treason. Locke even takes note of the possibility of this situation
when he examines the punishment of idolaters in the “Jewish commonwealth” in the
118
The Works of John Locke, 6: 9-10.
Ibid., 45-48; Ellis Sandoz, A Government of Laws, (Baton Rouge: LSU, 1990;
Columbia: Missouri, 2001), 80.
119
48
Letter Concerning Toleration. Locke finds that this commonwealth was “different from
all others” by being “an absolute theocracy.” Since “God himself was the legislator,”
apostasy from the worship of God in the form of idolatry constituted rebellion and
treason.120 Locke here either ignores the many other ancient regimes that believed that
they had received their laws from some god or distinguishes the “Jewish commonwealth”
with his audience’s belief that this commonwealth received in truth what the others
received by deception.
The problem posed by such theocratic societies to Locke’s thought is raised by a
closer examination of one of the tenets of Locke’s minimum dogma. This is the tenet
formed by Locke’s finding that “that church can have no right to be tolerated by the
magistrate, which is constituted upon such a bottom, that all those who enter into it, do
thereby, ipso facto, deliver themselves up to the protection and service of another
prince.”121 If Locke acknowledges that churches exist which deliver their members into
“the protection and service of another prince,” then those churches also deliver their
members to their own princes when those churches are located in these princes’ realms.
If the realm is constituted by such a delivery, as in the Papal States for example, then one
might wonder if dissension from that church might justly be considered treason and
rebellion in the same manner that idolatry was considered under the Mosaic Law. That
secular authority, rather than religious, was responsible for the punishing of heretics in
Western Christianity is indicative of this view of heresy as a crime against the
commonwealth rather than a crime against the Church.
120
121
The Works of John Locke, 6: 37.
Ibid., 46.
49
Beyond Locke’s attempt to justify his teachings as Christian is, of course, the
rationale behind his beliefs. Locke’s denunciation of religious persecution is in large part
based upon his teaching that such persecution is ineffectual in converting internal belief.
He writes in the Letter Concerning Toleration:
The care of souls cannot belong to the civil magistrate, because his power consists
only in outward force: but true and saving religion consists in the inward
persuasion of the mind, without which nothing can be acceptable to God. And
such is the nature of the understanding, that it cannot be compelled to the belief of
any thing by outward force. Confiscation of estate, imprisonment, torments,
nothing of that nature can have any such efficacy as to make men change the
inward judgment that they have framed of things.122
Without disputing Locke’s claim of the uselessness of outward force in bringing about
conversion, one may still dispute in favor of the utility of such force for the care of souls.
While such measures may not show heretics the error of their ways, these measures may
certainly be effective in preventing the spread of such errors. Heretics might be silenced
by execution, imprisonment, or the fear of either. A magistrate concerned for the souls of
the commonwealth’s citizenry could very easily exercise such force for this very reason
rather than to bring conversion to the heretic.
For Locke’s teaching of toleration to be successful, those concerned with the
souls of their neighbors with access to outward force must believe that the means to the
salvation of those souls will not be endangered by the spread of erroneous teaching in
order to be persuaded to not use such force. Locke must therefore defend his teaching of
religious toleration by demonstrating either that these errors are insufficient to endanger
the souls of those that believe them or that the way to salvation of souls is of such
simplicity and reasonableness that those who believe errors that endanger their souls may
122
Ibid., 11.
50
be easily convinced of their error. Locke’s minimum religious dogma represents an
attempt at such a demonstration.
III.
Locke’s Religious Dogma
Locke, in his The Reasonableness of Christianity as Delivered in the Scriptures,
concludes that “… the belief of Jesus of Nazareth to be the Messiah, together with those
concomitant articles of his resurrection, rule, and coming again to judge the world, [is] all
the faith required, as necessary to justification.”123 This minimum dogma he terms the
“law of faith.” He concludes, “but any other proposition contained in the Scripture, which
God has not thus made a necessary part of the law of faith, (without an actual assent to
which, he will not allow any one to be a believer) a man may be ignorant of, without
hazarding his salvation by a defect in his faith.”124 He further states:
This is a plain, intelligible proposition; and the all-merciful God seems herein to
have consulted the poor of the world, and the bulk of mankind. These are articles
that the labouring and illiterate man may comprehend. This is a religion suited to
vulgar capacities; and the state of mankind in this world, destined to labour and
travel [sic].125
Locke finds Christianity to be just the sort of religion that is necessary for the conditions
of his teachings. The remainder of this section will critique the means by which Locke
arrives at this conclusion.
First, as a matter of hermeneutical method, Locke’s relies exclusively upon the
Gospels and the Book of Acts in the New Testament for this conclusion. Locke’s
reasoning for this is as follows:
The epistles therefore, being all written to those who were already believers and
Christians, the occasion and end of writing them could not be to instruct them in
that which was necessary to make them Christians. This, it is plain, they knew
123
The Works of John Locke, 7: 151.
Ibid., 156.
125
Ibid., 157.
124
51
and believed already; or else they could not have been Christians and believers.
And they were writ upon particular occasions; and without those occasions had
not been writ; and so cannot be thought necessary to salvation: though they
resolving doubts, and reforming mistakes, are of great advantage to our
knowledge and practice. I do not deny, but the great doctrines of the Christian
faith are dropt here and there, and scattered up and down in most of them. But it
is not in the epistles we are to learn what are the fundamental articles of faith,
where they are promiscuously and without distinction mixed with other truths, in
discourses that were (though for edification, indeed, yet) only occasional. We
shall find and discern those great and necessary points best, in the preaching of
our Saviour and the apostles, to those who were yet strangers, and ignorant of the
faith; to bring them in, and convert them to it. And what that was we have seen
already out of the history of the evangelists and the Acts; where they are plainly
laid down, so that nobody can mistake them.126
Locke therefore finds that no knowledge gained in the epistles of the New Testament can
have any bearing upon the salvation of souls, only for the edification of these souls once
they were saved. For the purposes of Locke’s teaching of religious toleration this renders
disputes over doctrines contained in the epistles benign to one who might use outward
power to root out dangers to the souls of the citizens of the commonwealth. Since
Locke’s reasoning on this matter seems to have such great consequences for his other
teaching, this reasoning deserves close scrutiny.
Locke makes assumptions about the nature of both the Gospels and the epistles in
the New Testament. Locke assumes that the Gospels and the Book of Acts were not
occasional or written to those already believing in Christianity as he claims the epistles
were, and he further assumes that the occasional nature of the epistles prevents them from
making any clarifications of what is necessary to the salvation of souls crucial to that
salvation. Neither assumption may be completely justified.
Neither the Gospels nor the Book of Acts give any indication that they were
composed for an unbelieving audience. The Gospel of Luke, and the Book of Acts which
126
Ibid., 153-154.
52
indicates itself as a sequel to Luke’s Gospel (Acts 1:1), actually indicates that it is
actually written to someone already initiated into the teachings of Christianity, if not
already a believer in it (Luke 1:1-4). None of the other Gospels give any indication of
their audience so explicitly, but the evidence taken as whole seems to make it more
probable that they were written for an initiated audience, except perhaps the Gospel of
Mark. It would also be conjecture to believe that the Gospels were not written for
particular occasions, as were the epistles. It is entirely reasonable that at least one of the
Gospels may have been written to root out beliefs deemed heretical by putting into
writing teachings and actions of Jesus that had not been previously written. The Gospel
of John’s variance from the three Synoptic Gospels probably arises from just such a
purpose.127 If these books are both occasional and written to a believing audience, then
Locke’s claim that all of the New Testament’s teachings necessary to salvation may be
neatly found in the preaching contained in these books cannot be trusted. Even if the
“fundamental article of faith” was plainly laid out in the preaching in the Gospels and the
Book of Acts, that does not rule out the possibility that clarification of these articles
crucial to the salvation of souls, and therefore relevant to Locke’s teaching on religious
toleration, may have been made in the epistles.
Voegelin’s treatment of the Reasonableness of Christianity in his History of
Political Ideas may aid the understanding of Locke’s rejection of the Epistles:
When Locke approaches Christianity he makes a tabula rasa of Western
history. In the Essay Concerning Human Understanding he had swept aside all
127
Scholars are generally in concord in ascribing this purpose to the Gospel of John, their
disagreements are typically more concerned with the authorship of the work, the veracity
of its contents, the identification of heresy targeted, or the meaning of the John’s
argument. Cf. Robert M. Grant, A Historical Introduction to the New Testament (New
York: Harper & Row, 1963), chap. 11.
53
earlier metaphysical efforts and started philosophizing from scratch. In the
present study he makes a similar sweep of all Christian tradition, including the
patres and scholastics, and starts on an analysis of the New Testament as if it were
a book that had been published yesterday. The mind of the Essay is a blank paper
ready to receive the impression of the Gospel. Such open-mindedness leads to an
interesting discovery, which Sir Leslie Stephen has summarized nicely in the
following passage: “Christ and his apostles, on admitting converts to the church,
did not exact from them a profession of belief in the Athanasian Creed, the
Thirty-nine Articles, or the Westminster Confession, but were satisfied with the
acknowledgment that Christ was the Messiah.”128 We might have guessed it; and
Locke probably guessed it, too, before he indulged in his lengthy and painstaking
analysis that rendered this meager result. He did not want to prove the obvious.
His ponderous exposition of the trite gains its weight through the implication that
the later development of Christianity is an illegitimate excrescence. Only under
the assumption that his labors restore the true core of Christianity do they make
sense.129
Though Voegelin does not take note of it, Locke begins wiping away “illegitimate
excrescence” within the New Testament itself with his failure to recognize the doctrinal
importance of the Epistles.
Locke’s conclusion that believing Jesus to have been the Messiah is all that is
necessary for the salvation of souls itself begs for clarification. One might ask, “What is
meant by ‘belief,’ who was Jesus, or what exactly must ‘Messiah’ be believed to mean to
ensure salvation?” The Epistles offer clarifications of each of these issues, as particular
occasions demand clarification, sometimes going so far as to find those on the wrong side
of a clarification to be unbelievers. Locke denies the need for such clarification for the
salvation of souls, finding either that the “fundamental articles of faith” are either simple
beyond need of clarification or possible incorrect interpretation of these articles cannot be
so erroneous as to endanger the soul.
128
In a footnote here this quotation is attributed to “Stephen, History of English Thought
in the Eighteenth Century, I:80.”
129
Voegelin, History of Political Ideas, 6: 173.
54
Such a denial is advantageous to Locke’s teaching of religious toleration. If
clarification of Christian teachings were necessary even among those taught by Christ
and his apostles to ensure the salvation of souls, then such a need would certainly be
needed in the present day. If such a clarification is so necessary, then those in power may
see those who believe other than what was clarified as dangerous to weak spirited
subjects, thus making toleration a reckless policy.
Christian theology has been filled with a number of mysteries, doctrines that
admit that their subjects are above all but minimal human comprehension. Examples of
such mysteries from a selection of Christian traditions include beliefs in the Triune nature
of the Godhead, the Incarnation of Christ, Original Sin, the Transubstantiation of the
Eucharist, the Embodiment of Christ in the Church, and the Predestination of the Elect.
While Locke’s Reasonableness of Christianity may not explicitly deny the truth of all of
these mysteries, he denies finding evidence of many of them and does not find belief in
any of them to be necessary for the salvation of souls.
For an example of Locke’s assault upon mystery one may consider his treatment
of Original Sin. Locke finds that Adam’s Fall in the Garden of Eden does not carry with
it condemnation of his progeny, as held in the doctrine of Original Sin, but merely
removes the beneficence of eternal life from mankind meaning “that all men will die.”130
Locke forges this conclusion with a literalism of hermeneutic that could shame all but the
most rabid of fundamentalists. His entire interpretation of the relevant passages ignores
the experience of being fallen that finds expression in the story of Adam. Locke is aided
in this task with the “wiping away” of the Christian tradition discussed above. Such an
130
The Works of John Locke, 7: 8-9.
55
interpretation would have been impossible with the preservation of the Epistle to the
Romans, not to mention the work of the patres or the scholastics.
More notable than Locke’s reduction of the mystery of Original Sin is his
treatment of the Incarnation of Christ. The difficulties of this mystery are the seed behind
many of the greatest controversies in the history of Christianity. One might do well to
recall the divide on this issue between Arians and Catholics that gave occasion to the
Nicene Council. Prior to the Reformation, nearly all those termed heretics by the
Catholic Church diverged from Catholic teaching on this subject. Locke, on the contrary,
finds that correct teaching upon this issue is unimportant to the salvation of souls. The
only Christological teaching necessary for salvation is that Jesus was the Messiah; it is
entirely superfluous to salvation, according to Locke, whether one believes Christ to
mean man, God, or a mix of the two. Locke finds that application of the phrase “Son of
God” to Jesus means nothing more than that Jesus was the Messiah, so insistence upon
belief that Jesus be the Son of God, such as in John 3:36’s “He who believes in the Son
has eternal life; but he who does not believe in the Son will not see life, but the wrath of
God abides on him,” (UNASB) carry no further requirement of a potentially complex
belief in the divinity of Jesus.131 It is this teaching above all others that led early critics
of The Reasonableness of Christianity to charge its author with the heresy of
Socinianism.132 Examination of this charge against The Reasonableness aids in the
exploration of Locke’s minimum religious dogma.
131
Ibid., 21-22.
Each of the two vindications Locke wrote in defense of The Reasonableness of
Christianity was dedicated to refuting the charge of Socinianism levied by his opponent
John Edwards; Ibid., 161-162, 191; cf. Dewey D. Wallace, Jr., “Socinianism,
132
56
Socinianism, also known as Racovianism, takes it name from its Italian founder
Faustus Socinus. McLachlan in his Socinianism in Seventeenth-Century England
explains this belief system:
Two leading characteristics are at once apparent and place Socinianism in its
proper perspective. These are its scrupulous and vigorous biblicism and its
acknowledgement of the rights of reason in religion.133
McLachlan continues:
The Bible, for Socinus, was inspired, its authors being under the direct influence
of the Holy Spirit. To have any weight or substance a doctrine must be
scripturally attested and rest upon the revelation given in Scripture. There was
therefore no question of natural religion. Yet –and this is what is revolutionary in
the thought of Socinus –in order to perceive the truths of revelation a man had of
necessity to seek the guidance of reason, without which revelation was not selfevidencing. The Italian reformer was ready to confess that the biblical revelation
might contain much that was supra-rational, but according to his exegesis nothing
irrational. Right reason and divine truth must, of necessity agree.134
This position is found by McLachlan to lead to “some curious results.” Socinian writers
were often driven to “forced explanations of scripture,” such as the rationalization of
miracles “in a way that would to-day be considered either superfluous or
inadmissible.”135
McLachlan now explains the most controversial findings of Socinus:
Judged by the test of reference to Scripture, the Trinitarian scheme (as generally
understood) put itself out of court. He could find no genuine biblical text to
support it. At the bar of reason, too, it utterly failed to convince: three persons in
one substance were an impossibility of thought. The doctrine seemed, in fact, a
metaphysical labyrinth, out of which it was impossible to find one’s way.
Moreover, to make salvation depend on so abstruse a teaching, which had no
practical significance for the Christian life, was absurd. Its place was therefore
Justification by Faith, and The Sources of John Locke's The Reasonableness of
Christianity,” Journal of the History of Ideas, 45, no. 1 (1984): 49-66.
133
H. John McLachlan, Socinianism in Seventeenth-Century England, (London: Oxford
University Press, 1951), 11.
134
Ibid., 12; cf. Voegelin’s treatment of Locke’s Essay on Human Understanding in
Voegelin, History of Political Ideas, 6: 171-172.
135
McLachlan, 12.
57
taken by the doctrine of the Unipersonality of God and its natural corollary the
humanity of Christ.136
This will be treated as the crucial point of distinction of Socinianism for the purposes of
this study since this is the provision of Socinian doctrine above all others by which
Socinianism became a reviled name in Locke’s day.
The charge of Socinianism levied against Locke’s The Reasonableness of
Christianity is not without merit. Locke’s manner of argument, his rejection of mystery,
and, most of all, his denial of the necessity of belief in the Incarnation or the Trinity all
seem representative of Socinian belief. Further, when one considers that the Letter
Concerning Toleration, similar to Socinian teachings on toleration, was not known by
Locke’s first accusers to have also been written by the same author, almost proves the
case for Locke’s Socinianism.137
In A Vindication of the Reasonableness of Christianity Locke denies the charge of
Socinianism. He even feigns wonder at such a charge that may be overturned by such a
denial. 138 “Feigns” is the appropriate word, for Locke makes the wrong simple denial.
Denial of the charge of Socinianism does not repudiate its belief. Denial of its chief
tenets would. Locke never makes such a denial. Throughout the Reasonableness of
Christianity and its two vindications Locke scrupulously avoids ever directly stating his
own position on the Trinity or the Incarnation. However, this in itself cannot be taken as
conclusive evidence of Socinianism and may even be taken as evidence against the
charge, though not in a way particularly flattering to Locke.
136
Ibid., 13.
For Socinian toleration, Ibid., 9, 302-303; The Reasonableness of Christianity was
published anonymously.
138
The Works of John Locke, 7: 163.
137
58
While the Socinians deny the doctrines of the Trinity and the Incarnation, Locke
denies their importance. Locke in this way went farther than the Socinians would go.
Locke opponents, had they taken note of this, would have realized that this does not make
Locke a Socinian, but it may make him worse. Edwards argued that the author of the
Reasonableness was a Socinian and, therefore, an atheist.139 Edwards may have found an
easier argument by charging that Locke’s minimum dogma constituted atheism directly.
This not to say that Locke did not believe in God, but rather that he propagated beliefs
more favorable to the fostering of atheism than the Socinians did.
IV.
Conclusion
Locke, in effect, finds belief in anything above human comprehension to be
unnecessary to the salvation of souls, removing or rendering irrelevant all mystery in
Christianity. This removal of mystery might even be what Locke means with the word
“Reasonableness” in the title of this work. “Reasonableness” may equate with
“simplicity,” “comprehensibility,” or even “inability to cause a fuss,” as Locke equates
“Son of God” with “Messiah.” If one joins Locke in finding belief in these mysteries
unnecessary for salvation, then one would be hard pressed to find any teaching so
pernicious to the salvation of souls as to merit the persecution of its spread.
Locke seems to have designed his minimum religious dogma to render the
dominant religion of his society safe for the free pursuit of civil interests. It is this
convenient fit that led to earlier observations in this study that neither of Locke’s
minimum dogmas serve the purpose of protecting truth. The minimum religious dogma
joins the civil dogma in the pursuit of civil interests. At this point, one must admit that
139
Ibid., 162.
59
minimum dogma has now been finally, completely divorced from its engendering
experience, the leap in being.
This is the fundamental weakness of Locke’s minimum dogma. A renewed
experience of the leap in being can shake the foundations of Locke’s nexus of minimum
dogmas. Locke’s minimum religious dogma simply does not go far enough in isolating
representations that will be immediately sensed to be unseemly, or false in the Platonic
sense, by one who has experienced this leap. This minimum dogma itself may even be
found to be unseemly. As Locke does nothing to prevent the reawakening of the
experience of the leap in being, this experience poses a continual threat to his end of
pursuing peace solely for the sake of peace. This oversight by Locke is excusable,
however, since sufficient conditions to prevent a leap in being may only be possible in an
Orwellian nightmare regime.
Locke’s design for peace in the minimum civil dogma is not without merit. As
the first chapter of this study concluded with Voegelin, “an attack on the unseemly
symbolizations of order may destroy order itself with the faith in its analogies, that it is
better to see the truth obscurely than not at all, that imperfect attunement to the order of
being is preferable to disorder.”140 This applies to Locke’s unseemly minimum dogma
just as it did to the cosmological analogues of the past. Room may ultimately be found
for the representation of a leap in being under the protection of the order offered by
Locke’s minimum dogma. Though imperfect, and unseemly, in its representation of the
deeper questions of life, the shelter offered by Locke’s minimum dogma does allow the
140
Voegelin, Order and History, 1: 11.
60
conditions for these questions to be asked. Locke may have accomplished by accident
the feat greater spirits before him, like Spinoza, only attempted.
61
CONCLUSION
This study followed the development of minimum dogma from its inception in the
experience of the leap in being to the abandonment of the leap in being as the orienting
force in the minimum dogma advocated by Locke. The course of this development will
be briefly reviewed here. A treatment of the final problem raised by this study, the
inadequacy of Locke’s minimum religious dogma as a support for his minimum civil
dogma, will complete this study after this review.
The first chapter of this study found that minimum dogmas, the concern of this
study, emerged initially as critiques of the milieu of analogical symbolization utilized by
humanity to comprehend the fundamental experiences that man has of the world. These
critiques, following a lengthy process of differentiation of the earlier symbolization,
come as a result of the experience of the inadequacy of all analogies in the description of
the reality experienced beyond reality as it is observed. The first of these critiques found
by Eric Voegelin in his research of the matter, the critique of the Hellenic poets by
Xenophanes, rejected such analogues as unseemly. The proper representation of this
reality beyond reality becomes a pressing concern that culminates with Plato’s rejection
of the poets in the minimum dogma of The Republic.141 This pressing concern is
alleviated in the salutary minimum dogma of The Laws, a dogma that contradicts the
findings of philosophy, since an imperfect order is found to be preferable to the
destruction of the material basis of all order in the pursuit of a perfect order.
141
The exile of the poets from the best polis in Book Ten of The Republic was not
considered in this study, though a study of this event in the dialogue may be fruitful to a
better understanding of this study’s subject.
62
The second chapter examines two minimum dogmas that represent an institutional
shift from the minimum dogmas in the works of Plato and Xenophanes’ seemliness. The
minimum dogmas found in the work of St. Thomas More and Benedict de Spinoza, rather
than functioning as rejections of inadequate representation of the divine as had
Xenophanes, Plato, and the theological tradition following their work, served to increase
the representations deemed acceptable. This shift represented a marriage of minimum
dogma and religious toleration in the interest of securing the survival of material basis of
all order, moving beyond the minimum dogma of The Laws but, arguably, moving by the
same motivation.
The third and final chapter of this study found that while Locke continued the
marriage of minimum dogma and toleration made by More and Spinoza, he also
represented a break from their tradition. The minimum dogmas of More and Spinoza
both had the end of securing the material basis of order for the sake of that order. 142
Locke in his Letter Concerning Toleration advocated a minimum dogma that acted solely
to secure this base without concern for the proper representation of the divine. Locke’s
Reasonableness of Christianity represented in its entirety a recommendation of a second
voluntary, religiously motivated (purportedly) minimum dogma. This dogma was found
to function as an institutional support for Locke’s first minimum dogma and to have very
little to recommend of itself beyond that function.
It is also this dogma that poses the final problem found by this study. This study
found a variety of tasks that the religious minimum dogma of Locke seems intended to
fill. Chief of these tasks is the formulation of a convincing argument that the truth has no
142
More’s minimum dogma was found to have similarities to Locke’s but was found to
have a further end by an esoteric reading of the Utopia.
63
need of coercion. Locke’s minimum dogma demonstrates the requirements of salvation
as both satisfied by a great number of the competing belief systems in his contemporary
society and simple beyond the need for coercive aid. This study found that Locke’s
religious minimum dogma survives neither close scrutiny nor profound religious
experience. The failure of this component of Locke’s thought creates a theoretical
vacuum that must be filled if the remainder of his program is to survive the stress of
existence.
The filling of this theoretical vacuum is a pressing issue as Locke’s teaching on
toleration and the standard by which he constructed his minimum civil dogma have both
been incorporated into the constitutions and jurisprudence of many of the nation-states of
Western Civilization. These teachings also form a key, if not the key component, of the
Western liberal values formulated as fundamental human rights that must necessarily be
protected by all legitimate governments. Since this study shares the belief that it found
expressed in Plato’s formulation of the minimum dogma found in The Laws, that is the
belief that imperfect order is preferable to the destruction of the material basis upon
which order is founded in the pursuit of perfect order (or even improved order), it is now
necessary to attempt to find an appropriate filling for the previously mentioned
theoretical vacuum.
One candidate for such a filling may be found in Ellis Sandoz’s treatment of
Locke and the American founding in A Government f Laws. Sandoz finds that the Locke
the American Founders had in view when they drew so heavily upon his thought in
support of their own is not the Locke revealed by critical examination. The American
Founders understood Locke as firmly planted in the Christian Whig tradition and as an
64
opponent of Hobbes as much as of Filmer. Locke’s natural right was viewed as an
extension of the natural law of the Thomistic tradition and his views on property were
viewed as developing from reverence of the Ancient Constitution.143 Sandoz further
finds that the Biblical and Classical studies of the founders were so deep that they
adequately covered the faults of Locke. Locke’s “Life, Liberty, and Property,” are
seamlessly translated, for example, into the far more philosophically grounded “Life,
Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness,” by Jefferson in the Declaration. A Locke
incompatible with Christian cosmology “was simply unthinkable to the American
founders.”144
Sandoz finds that the American Founders intuitively corrected the entire Lockean
regime, not only his teachings on toleration. The Classical and Biblical background of
the American Founders also might be found filling the vacuum left by the failure of
Locke’s minimum religious dogma. So secure were the Founders in this background that
the true representation of the divine was not perceived as endangered by incorporating
toleration into the Bill Of Rights amended to the American Constitution nor the toleration
found in many of the state constitutions. Rather than basing toleration in the minimal
truth found by Locke, it was based in the magnanimity of the truth found through the
course of the Western tradition.
Such a basis is subject to a few criticisms, however. First, the consensus upon
which this basis of magnanimity is founded, artificially created through immigration of
groups prepossessing it to a land empty of serious threats to it, has been broken and is
unlikely to resurface without resorting to means that might destroy the basis of order that
143
144
Sandoz, A Government of Laws, 191.
Ibid., 134.
65
this study hopes to safeguard. Second, this magnanimity was not so magnanimous to
guarantee toleration at the State level of government, preserving a sphere for enforcing
the adequacy of representation of divinity. Finally, this basis alone did not fill the
theoretical vacuum. Prevalent also was a “Yankee Trader” mentality that shared Locke’s
apathy towards the true representation of the divine. This mentality formed at least part
of the compromise that mandated toleration at the Federal level of government in the
Constitution while allowing states discretion to enforce religious dogma within their
police power at the local level. It is also this mentality that probably most prompts the
reaction of religious movements, such as Fundamentalisms of different types or even
perhaps mass movements like Marxism, against toleration.
Grounding toleration upon the magnanimity of an experience of such profundity
that it does not need coercion might remain the right approach to the present problem if
one guards against the preceding criticisms. Such magnanimity must not be dependent
upon consensus as that of the Founders, since no consensus of this sort is available.
Likewise, magnanimity must be of a degree that it can cope with the rejection of the
Constitutional compromise of Federal toleration only and accept toleration as it is now
guaranteed at every level of government. This means that the truth experienced must be
more magnanimous than that found in the Founders in one is find experiential support for
toleration as it is now practiced.
An experience of this profundity may not be easily had. It requires a maturity of
experience similar to that this study found in Plato’s minimum dogma in The Laws. Plato
is here so confident of the sufficiency of the truth of existence experienced by the
philosopher that he is willing to remove the philosopher from the protection of society,
66
even mandating the imprisonment and occasional execution of philosophers who cannot
keep their peace. Plato is able to do this because the experience of the philosopher in
founding the city is sufficiently adequate that the experience need not be enforced upon
others at the risk of societal cohesion. The diffusion of the experience of the leap in
being in modern society complicates the problem, since rather than Plato’s necessity of
finding adequately profound representation for the experience of isolated philosophers,
adequate representation must be found communally for the many manifestations in which
the leap in being may now be found. This task, as well as the incorporation of its
findings into a theory of politics, is unfortunately beyond the scope of this study.
67
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Burnet, John. Early Greek Philosophy, 4th ed. London: Adam & Charles Black, 1930.
Engman, Thomas S. “Hythloday’s Utopia and More’s England: an Interpretation of
Thomas More’s Utopia.” The Journal of Politics 44, no. 1 (1982): 131-149.
Eubanks, Cecil L. “Reinhold Niebuhr: The Dialectics of Grace and Power.” The
Political Science Reviewer 8 (Fall 1978): 63-102.
Grant, Robert M. A Historical Introduction to the New Testament. New York: Harper &
Row, 1963.
Jaeger, Werner. The Theology of the Early Greek Philosophers. Translated by Edward
S. Robinson. London: Oxford University Press, 1967.
Locke, John. Political Writings of John Locke. Edited with an introduction by David
Wootton. New York: Mentor, 1993.
________. Two Treatises of Government. Edited with an introduction by Peter Laslett.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988.
________. The Works of John Locke. 10 vols. London: 1823.
Machiavelli, Niccolò. The Prince, 2d ed. Translated by Harvey C. Mansfield. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1998.
McLachlan, H. John. Socinianism in Seventeenth-Century England. London: Oxford
University Press, 1951.
More, Thomas, Sir, Saint. The Complete Works of St. Thomas More. Edited by J.B.
Trapp. Vol. 9, The Apology. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1979.
________. Utopia. Edited and translated by David Wootton.
Indianapolis: Hackett, 1999.
Niebuhr, Reinhold. The Essential Reinhold Niebuhr. Edited by Robert McAfee Brown.
New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986.
Plato. The Laws of Plato. Translated by Thomas L. Pangle. New York: Basic Books,
1980. Reprint, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988.
________. The Republic of Plato, 2d ed. Translated by Allan Bloom. New York: Basic
Books, 1991.
68
Sandoz, Ellis. A Government of Laws. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press,
1990; Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2001.
Spinoza, Benedict de. Ethics Including the Improvement of the Understanding.
Translated by R. H. M. Elwes. Amherst, N.Y.: Prometheus Books, 1989.
________. A Theologico-Political Treatise and A Political Treatise. Translated by
R. H. M. Elwes. New York: Dover Publications, 1951.
Strauss, Leo. The City and Man. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1964.
________. Natural Right and History. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1953.
Vlastos, Gregory. “Theology and Philosophy in Early Greek Thought.” The
Philosophical Quarterly 2, no. 7 (1952): 97-123.
Voegelin, Eric. Anamnesis. Translated and Edited by Gerhart Niemeyer. South Bend:
University of Notre Dame Press, 1978; Columbia: University of Missouri Press,
1990.
________. Autobiographical Reflections. Edited by Ellis Sandoz. Baton Rouge:
Louisiana State University Press, 1989.
________. The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin. Edited by Ellis Sandoz. Vol. 22,
History of Political Ideas. Vol. 4, Renaissance and Reformation. Edited by
David L. Morse and William M. Thompson. Columbia: University of Missouri
Press, 1998.
________. The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin. Edited by Ellis Sandoz. Vol. 24,
History of Political Ideas. Vol. 6, Revolution and the New Science. Edited by
Barry Cooper. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1998.
________. The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin. Edited by Ellis Sandoz. Vol. 25,
History of Political Ideas. Vol. 7, The New Order and the Last Orientation.
Edited by Jürgen Gebhardt and Thomas A. Hollweck. Columbia: University of
Missouri Press, 1999.
________. The New Science of Politics. Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1952.
________. Order and History. Vol. 1, Israel and Revelation. Baton Rouge: Louisiana
State University Press, 1956.
________. Order and History. Vol. 2, The World of the Polis. Baton Rouge: Louisiana
State University Press, 1957.
69
________. Order and History. Vol. 3, Plato and Aristotle. Baton Rouge: Louisiana
State University Press, 1957.
________. Science, Politics, and Gnosticism. In The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin.
Edited by Ellis Sandoz. Vol. 5, Modernity Without Restraint. Vol. 4, Edited by
Manfred Henningsen. Columbia: University of Missouri, 2000.
Wallace, Dewey D., Jr. “Socinianism, Justification by Faith, and The Sources of John
Locke's The Reasonableness of Christianity.” Journal of the History of Ideas, 45,
no. 1 (1984): 49-66.
70
VITA
Clinton Barron was born in Shreveport, Louisiana, and attended high school at Haughton
High School. After graduating in 1997, he attended Louisiana State University, from
which he earned a Bachelor of Arts degree with a double major in history and political
science. He began his graduate studies in political science in the spring of 2002 at
Louisiana State University. He will receive his Master of Arts degree in August of 2004.
71